Arjun Munda, the Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Jamshedpur, will be the next chief minister of Jharkhand as the party has yielded to the coalition partner Jharkhand Mukti Morcha's demand to share the post by rotation.

An official announcement of his name was deferred after the death of former vice-president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, one of the founders of the BJP as well as erstwhile Jana Sangh.

Munda finally became the party's choice to take over as the new coalition chief minister to rule for the next 22 months and then hand over the post for the remaining 22 months of the assembly tenure to the JMM whose leader, Chief Minister Shibu Soren, is to pave the way for him by stepping down.

Notwithstanding BJP veteran LK Advani's reservations on Munda, party president Nitin Gadkari finalised his name in a late night meeting at his residence with former president Rajnath Singh and general secretary Ananth Kumar on the basis of their report that the majority of the BJP MLAs are backing Munda.

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Gadkari had a series of meetings late Friday, including one of the party seniors at Advani's residence, to take a final decision on Jharkhand before flying off Saturday night to Barcelona, capital of Spain, for a fortnight-long holiday. Because of his foreign sojourn, the BJP's national executive planned in Patna in May-end (ahead of the assembly elections in Bihar likely in October) is being postponed to June 12-13.

He is understood to have also passed orders that Ananth Kumar takes charge of all party matters on his behalf during his absence from the country. Ananth Kumar, a former union minister and five-time MP from Bangalore South, thus emerges as the second most powerful leader in the party after Gadkari.

Sources said Gadkari spoke to both Shibu Soren and his son Hemant and secured a consent on Munda's name, though both had been earlier objecting to his candidature in view of the deep-rooted rivalry between the Santhals and Mundas.
Soren is a Santhal, the largest tribal community based in Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Bihar that is very conscious about its identity and heritage and speaks Santhali with own script. Arjun Munda belongs to the Munda community that calls itself 'Hodoko' which means human beings and speaks Mundari.

Gadkari has also put his stamp on the shape of the new coalition government. It will be a 12-member ministry with the BJP and JMM sharing four berths each, All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) three and Janata Dal(U) one. He has, however, given a leeway to Ananth Kumar to allow five JMM ministers and in that case the BJP will have only three.

Jharkhand had plunged into a political crisis for the past 18 days because of the BJP first withdrawing support to Shibu Soren's government and then putting on hold the decision for bargains. Soren voting against the BJP-sponsored cut motion on petroleum prices in the Lok Sabha had angered the BJP to take the drastic step of withdrawing support but it mellowed down after Soren and his son explained it was by mistake. Shibu Soren is still a Lok Sabha member from Dumka and could not contest for the Assembly seat to legitimatise his position as the chief minister.