Jharkhand Mukti Morcha
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Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), regional political party of Jharkhand state, eastern India. It has had only a limited presence on the national political scene in New Delhi.
The JMM was formed in 1973 as a movement to spearhead what would become a decades-long effort to establish a separate Jharkhand state out of the existing Bihar state. Its founders were Shibu Soren, Nirmal Mahto, and the Marxist Arun Kumar (A.K.) Roy—all of whom were members of indigenous minorities officially classified as Scheduled Tribes. The campaign was instrumental in the creation of Jharkhand in 2000. Since then, the JMM has remained an influential political party in the state, with intermittent success at gaining political power there. The JMM has been politically opportunistic in its outlook and has attempted to ally itself with political parties on the left, center, and right ideologically. Political instability in the state, where successive elections produced inconclusive results in the legislative assembly, made it possible for the JMM to establish such alliances, albeit at the cost of the party’s attachment to any distinct ideology of its own—other than promoting the welfare of the state’s tribal peoples.
The JMM, like many regional parties in India, has been centered on its founders and their families. In the early 1980s after the JMM had shifted more to the right, Roy left the party to focus on his Marxist Coordination Committee organization. Following the murder in 1987 of the party’s cofounder and first president, Nirmal Mahto, leadership of the JMM passed to Shibu Soren. His son, Hemant Soren, and daughter-in-law, Sita Soren, were also prominent leaders within the party—as was Sudhir Mahto, Nirmal Mahto’s younger brother, until his death in early 2014.
The JMM began contesting Bihar state legislative assembly elections as a registered party in 1980, winning modest numbers of seats in that election and subsequent polls through 2000. In 2005, when Jharkhand held its first state assembly elections, the JMM allied itself with the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD; National People’s Party), with the parties winning 17, 9, and 7 seats, respectively, in the 81-member chamber. The alliance formed the nucleus of a coalition government led by the JMM, with Shibu Soren as chief minister (head of government). That government lasted less than two weeks in office, however, before it lost a confidence vote in the legislature and resigned. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) then formed a coalition government.
The JMM again set up another coalition government in August 2008, after assembly members from other parties had defected to it. Soren began his second term as chief minister. That government lasted until January 2009, falling after Soren failed in his attempt to win an assembly seat in a by-election within the required six months after being appointed. Rule by the central government in New Delhi was imposed.
The party decided to contest the 2009 state assembly elections without any alliances, although Soren indicated that he was ready to form ties with any party or front after the election results were known. In the polling the JMM did only marginally better than in 2005, winning 18 seats. It still was able to form a government in December, with support from four other parties (including the BJP), and Shibu Soren again became chief minister. His government’s tenure was again brief, however, lasting only until the beginning of June 2010, after the BJP had withdrawn its support.
Three more months of rule by the central government ensued (June–September 2010), after which the JMM and the BJP joined to form another coalition government. The BJP assumed the chief minister’s position, with the JMM’s Hemant Soren serving as deputy chief minister. That government fell in January 2013 when the JMM withdrew after the BJP had rejected the JMM’s demand that Hemant Soren be appointed chief minister.
Six months later, however, the JMM—with support from the Congress Party, the RJD, and some independent assembly members—formed a new coalition government, and Hemant Soren was installed as chief minister. He held the post until the end of January 2024 when he was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate, a central government investigating agency, in an alleged land scam. JMM leader Champai Soren took over as chief minister for an interim period from February–July 2024 at which time Hemant Soren was released and resumed office.
The JMM began participating in national elections to the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament) in 1984, fielding candidates mainly in Bihar constituencies. Results were meager, the party’s best year being 1991, when it won six seats. For the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, the JMM formed an alliance with the Congress Party, the RJD, and the Communist Party of India, and its candidates won a total of five seats: four in Jharkhand and one in neighboring Orissa (now Odisha) state.
For the 2009 elections, however, when the JMM chose to contest independently, it could win only two seats—both from Jharkhand constituencies. The party had a repeat performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, again garnering just two seats in Jharkhand. This was reduced to a single seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections; in the 2014 general elections the party managed three seats.
The JMM and its allies, including the Congress, defeated the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the 2024 Jharkhand assembly elections, winning 56 seats out of 81, well past the target of 41. The JMM emerged as the biggest party in the state with 34 seats out of the total 56 won by the alliance.