Tribal leader Vishnu Deo Sai to be Chhattisgarh Chief Minister

Raipur: Tribal leader and erstwhile Union Minister Vishnu Deo Sai will be the new Chief Minister of Chattisgarh after his unanimously election as leader of the state BJP Legislature Party at its meeting here on Sunday.

Among those present at the crucial meeting in the BJP state office were central observers Union ministers Arjun Munda and Sarbananda Sonowal, General Secretary Dushyant Gautam, state in-charge Om Mathur, central minister Mansukh L Mandaviya, and leader Nitin Nabin.

After a five-year-interregnum, the saffron camp has surged back to power in this tribal-dominated state by winning 54 of the total 90 Assembly constituencies.

Chhattisgarh – which came into existence in November 2000 after being carved out of Madhya Pradesh – will have the 59-year-old Sai, who represents Jashpur district’s Kunkuri, as the second BJP chief minister after Raman Singh who was in the saddle from 2003 to 2018.

In 2014, Sai served as Minister of State in the Centre’s Narendra Modi dispensation. He is a three-time parliamentarian. In 1990, he was first elected to undivided Madhya Pradesh’s Vidhan Sabha from Tapkara.

Sai was born on February 21, 1964 in a cultivator’s household at Jashpur district’s Bagiya village. He studied until the tenth standard at the Loyola Higher Secondary School in Kunkuri.

He commenced his political career in 1989 as Panch in the Bagiya Village Panchayat. Sai is believed to be the choice of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and also Raman Singh. In 2006 and 2020, he was elevated as BJP state President. He is a special invitee to the party’s National Working Committee. (UNI)