"Tea Tribes Have Waited Too Long For Justice": Hemant Soren At Assam Rally

Jharkhand Chief Minister and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) President Hemant Soren took his party's electoral battle to upper Assam on Sunday, addressing a massive rally of tea garden workers in Dibrugarh in support of the party's Tingkhong constituency candidate, Mahavir Baske.

The rally marked the JMM's most ambitious political expansion beyond its Jharkhand stronghold, targeting the estimated 70-lakh-strong tea tribe population, including the Santhal, Munda, Oraon and Kurukh communities, whose ancestors migrated from Chota Nagpur during colonial rule.

Arriving by helicopter, Soren received a thunderous welcome from members of the Adivasi (tribal) community and tea garden workers.

"The tea tribe community of Assam has waited far too long for justice. Your ancestors built these gardens with their sweat and made Assam prosperous, yet you still fight for your rights and dignity," Soren said.

Alleging that wages were low and tea estates lacked proper facilities like hospitals, the JMM chief said his party had come not as an outsider but to give voice to workers' issues.

A central promise of his address was the long-pending demand for Scheduled Tribe status for tea tribe communities, who are recognised as STs in Jharkhand but remain classified as Other Backward Classes in Assam.

"It is a grave injustice that the tea community is denied ST status here. This is a question of constitutional rights and human dignity. A JMM presence in the Assam Assembly will take this fight to its logical conclusion," Soren said.

The JMM has announced 21 candidates for the 126-member Assam Assembly elections scheduled for April 9, after seat-sharing talks with the Congress failed. It is now in an alliance with the Jai Bharat Party in Assam.

Urging voters to back Baske, the chief minister added: "He is one of your own. He has lived your struggles. Send him to the Assembly, and together we will write a new chapter for Assam's tea tribes."