“Respected Dishom Guruji has left us all. Today, I feel completely empty,” Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren said in a post on X.

Soren was on ventilator support and was receiving treatment at Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital for over a month. He was hospitalised in the last week of June with a kidney-related issue.

81-year-old Shibu had been receiving regular treatment at the hospital for an extended period. He had been the leader of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha for the last 38 years and was also recognised as the party’s founding patron.

Apart from serving as the Jharkhand CM, Shibu Soren represented the Dumka seat in the Parliament from 1980 to 1984, 1989 to 1998, and 2002 to 2019. He also served as the Minister for Coal at the Centre.