Jharkhand floats tender to develop Soren house as ‘heritage building’

The Jharkhand government will spend Rs 4.59 crore to convert former chief minister and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) supremo Shibu Soren’s government residence into a ‘heritage building’. A advertisement published by the e-procurement cell of the Jharkhand Building Constructions Department on Tuesday invited tenders for the same for “renovation and restoration” work.

Three-time CM Soren is currently a Rajya Sabha MP, having lost from his home turf of Dumka in the last general election. The residence to be designated a heritage building was allotted to him for his role in the movement for Jharkhand statehood, during the tenure of the Arjun Munda government.

Soren’s son Hemant Soren is currently the CM of Jharkhand.

Tuesday’s notice said the “Renovation and Restoration of Main Building as Heritage Building at Hon’ble Ex-C.M Sri Sibu (Shibu) Soren Residence at Morabadi Ranchi” would be completed in six months.

Building Construction Secretary Sunil Kumar said the decision had been initiated not by the state government but the department. “

The government wanted Soren’s residence to be converted into a site where his lifelong struggle to get a separate state would be depicted. It will contain literature, pictures and artefacts related to the Jharkhand movement. The building department will create the infrastructure and the implementation will be done by a different department.”

Soren first got involved in politics protesting over tribal lands, after his father was killed by alleged moneylenders. In 1972, he along with others formed the JMM. He was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1980 from Dumka and went on to become the Union Minister for Coal in Manmohan Singh’s government. In 2006, he was convicted for kidnapping and murdering his personal secretary Shashinath Jha, but was later acquitted by the High Court.