Dibrugarh: Jharkhand Chief Minister and JMM chief Hemant Soren took his party’s electoral battle to upper Assam on Sunday, addressing a massive rally of tea garden workers at the Rajgarh Tea Estate playground in Dibrugarh in support of Tingkhong Assembly JMM candidate Mahavir Baske.
The rally marked the JMM’s most ambitious political expansion beyond its Jharkhand stronghold, targeting an estimated 60 to 70 lakh tea tribe population, including Santhal, Munda, Oraon, and Kurukh communities whose ancestors migrated from Chhotanagpur during colonial rule.
Arriving by helicopter, Soren received a thunderous welcome from Adivasi community members 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.
He pointed to low wages and the lack of proper hospitals and facilities in tea estates as pressing concerns, asserting that his party had come not as an outsider but as a voice for their pain.
A central promise of his address was the long-pending demand for Scheduled Tribe status for tea tribe communities, who are recognized 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. The party is leveraging its experience in Jharkhand’s tribal politics to build a credible presence in Assam’s tea-belt constituencies.
Urging voters to back Baske, the Chief Minister added: “Mahavir Baske 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.”
The Tingkhong rally is part of a broader JMM campaign sweep across upper Assam’s tea belt ahead of polling day.