Congress general secretary in-charge of Jharkhand Avinash Pande accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of trying to topple the Hemant Soren government and claimed that his party was in the know of the activities of Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in Delhi during the past seven days.

“We have the record of his meetings in Delhi for the last seven days. We will disclose that at an appropriate time,” he said.

Pande claimed that Sarma has been in touch with Congress legislators and union ministers have been threatening and intimidating them for a while in Jharkhand.

He later announced the suspension of three legislators – Naman Bixal Kongari (Kolebira), Irfan Ansari (Jamtara) and Rajesh Kachhap (Khijri) -- were detained by the West Bengal police on Saturday night after huge amounts of cash was seized from their vehicle in Ranihati area of Howrah district.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has suspended the three and vowed further strict action against them and others found involved in toppling the coalition government in the state.

The ruling alliance of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has 47 legislators in the 81-member assembly. While the JMM has 30 legislators, the Congress has 16 and the RJD one. On the other hand, the BJP has 25 legislators while the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI(ML) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have one each.

“You saw what happened in Maharashtra. In 31 days also, a Cabinet has not been formed because chief minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis are afraid that the government might fall if the Cabinet is declared. In Madhya Pradesh the same thing happened. The ED and IT teams are stationed in Chhattisgarh for the same purpose. In Rajasthan, we saw how the BJP tried to destabilise the Congress government. Goa, Karnataka, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur saw the same surprising pattern,” Pande said.

After the fall of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra, the JMM and the Congress had been keeping a watch on their legislators. That is how they were able to save the government for now.