Jharkhand HC Dismisses PIL Against CM Soren

PIL Against Hemant Soren Dismissed by Jharkhand High Court

Jharkhand High Court dismisses a PIL against Chief Minister Hemant Soren, related to illegal mining allegations, citing repetition of an older case.

RANCHI – The Jharkhand High Court on Wednesday dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed against Chief Minister Hemant Soren and his family in an illegal mining case.

RTI activist and advocate Sunil Mahato had alleged in his PIL that Soren misused his office by allocating mining leases to himself and his relatives.

The accusations also included charges of disproportionate assets and unknown sources of income.

During the hearing, the state’s Advocate General Rajeev Ranjan and Soren’s advocate Piyush Chitresh referred to a Supreme Court decision in a similar case involving Shiv Shankar Sharma.

Mahato’s lawyer contended that this case was distinct, focusing on land allocation in the industrial area to Soren’s wife and sister-in-law, rather than just mining lease allocation.

The PIL alleged that Soren, as the mines minister, allocated a mining lease for himself near Ranchi and for the firms of his wife Kalpana Murmu and sister-in-law Sarla Murmu.

However, the High Court bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Mishra and Justice Anand Sen, found the petition to be a repetition of an older PIL and dismissed it.

The court stated that there were no new elements in this PIL compared to the previous one, which also dealt with the allotment of a mining lease in Soren’s favor.

This dismissal represents a significant development in the ongoing legal scrutiny of Hemant Soren’s tenure as Chief Minister, particularly in relation to mining lease allocations.