(Repeating, correcting matter in para 1)

Ranchi, Sep 18 (UNI) His life had been a litany of failures. He failed to keep his father's wishes who wanted him to become a policeman but he went and joined politics instead. He failed to keep his marriage afloat. And he failed to make a mark as a minister in Jharkhand.

But success finally has arrived. Madhu Koda (pronounced Kora), 35, has turned out to be a one-man army who rocked the boat of the BJP in Jharkhand. The Independent MLA from the mineral and forest rich Jagannathpur constituency was sworn in today as the fourth Chief Minister of Jharkhand.

Madhu Koda, the curly haired man who loves to attend the Assembly in jeans and a jacket is be only the third Independent MLA to become a Chief Minister- Bishwanath Das of Orissa was the first in 1971 and Dr F A Khonglam of Meghalaya followed in 2002.

No one had thought that the political novice who was denied a ticket by the BJP in the 2005 Assembly polls would ever replace erstwhile Chief Minister Arjun Munda. Mr Koda, in fact was in those days more of an object of pity than a symbol of strength. Many still remember how he broke down before the party's senior leader, Yashwant Sinha, after the BJP refused to field him from the seat, a constituency that Mr Koda had represented after winning the seat on a BJP ticket in 1999.

But then Mr Koda contested and won the seat in the West Singhbhum district as an Independent candidate, becoming a much sought after legislator in the House. The BJP-Janata Dal (United) combine had got a fractured mandate in the last polls having won only 36 seats in the 81-member House excluding the Nominated member. To keep his government going, Mr Munda had to bow to the Independents and their hard bargains. So Mr Koda became his Mines and Geology Minister.

Mr Koda's term was a lacklustre one. A product of a Hindi school in the backward West Singhbhum district, Mr Koda has a speech impediment which inhibits him from speaking in the Assembly. He is also not remembered for any landmark decision of work as a Deputy Panchayat Raj Minister in the Babulal Marandi government in his first tenure as MLA. Or later as a Minister under Mr Munda.

Some still believe that Mr Koda is a simpleton, others are not so sure. It was, after all, he who raised the banner of revolt aganinst the Munda dispensation, along with three other Independent ministers. The four resigned , reducing Mr Munda's government to a minority. Observers believe that the move had the support of some strategists of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) who have propped up Mr Koda as the new Chief Minister.

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