Jharkhand minister Sudivya Kumar Sonu dies after a cardiac arrest in Giridih

Sudivya Kumar Sonu, Jharkhand's minister for Higher and Technical Education and Urban Development, died in the early hours of Sunday after a cardiac arrest. He was 56. Family members took him from his Giridih residence to a private hospital around 2:30 a.m. after he complained of chest pain. Doctors said an ECG showed a heart attack and that his blood pressure could not be recorded. They started inotropic and vasopressor support. He collapsed within about 20 minutes of admission. Resuscitation failed. He was declared dead around 4 a.m.

Sonu also held Tourism, Arts and Culture, and Sports and Youth Affairs. He sat in the Assembly for Giridih Sadar, a seat he won in 2019 and kept in 2024 before Hemant Soren put him in the cabinet. He is survived by his wife Shweta Sharma, two daughters and a son.

The state government declared official mourning on 6 and 7 September. Flags on government buildings will fly at half-mast. No official functions will be held. Government offices will stay closed on Monday.

A party manager as much as a minister

Soren called him "Sonu Bhaiya" and "elder brother" in a public message and said the loss left a void he could not put into words. Speaker Rabindra Nath Mahato and Congress leader Rajesh Thakur issued condolences. Former chief minister Champai Soren, now in the BJP, said he was shocked. Governor Santosh Gangwar described the death as an irreparable loss for the state.

Sonu had been with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha since the late 1980s, in the years of Shibu Soren's statehood movement. Party colleagues said he was the person Soren leaned on during the 2024 arrest in a land and money-laundering case, when the government had to be held together from outside the chief minister's office. Last month he was again in the middle of the government's response to student protests in Ranchi.

Four departments now need new political heads. Higher and Technical Education sets the tone for universities and polytechnics. Urban Development and Housing covers municipal work in a state where Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Dhanbad all have unfinished civic files. Tourism and Culture sit on a smaller budget but a large part of JMM's self-image. Sports and Youth Affairs is the portfolio that meets students first.

What follows in Giridih

A cabinet death in a ruling party does not automatically trigger a by-election if the Assembly term still has years on the clock, but it does force Soren to pick a successor in Giridih's political network and in Ranchi's secretariat. Sonu's value to the JMM was less the size of his ministries than the fact that he could move between the old movement generation and the current government without becoming a faction of his own.

The two-day mourning period will close the offices. After that the chief minister has to name who holds the files. That choice will tell the rest of the coalition how much of Sonu's political work Soren intends to keep inside the family of the party, and how much he will spread across the cabinet.