PTI photo.
Bhopal: The next chief minister for BJP in Chhattisgarh will be tribal leader and former union minister Vishnu Deo Sai. On Sunday afternoon, Sai was elected as the leader of the BJP’s legislature party at a meeting of the 54 newly-elected MLAs, NDTV reports.
Sai was selected after a week of results announcement and consequent deliberations. In a state where 32 per cent of the population is tribal, Sai’s elections will align with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s strategy of having a CM from tribal communities.
However, the largest communities in Chhattisgarh were OBCs, and the BJP was in a dilemma as to whether to elect a tribal leader or an OBC member to the top seat of the state.
NDTV reports that the party decided on a tribal leader after its performance in the state’s tribal areas. BJP had dominatingly won 14 assembly seats in the tribal-dominated Surguja region while 8 of the 12 seats in Bastar.
The 59-year-old Sai was backed by the RSS, BJP’s ideological mentor, and he was close to former Chief Minister Raman Singh, who is BJP’s largest leader in the state.
Sai was a four-time MP and was a member of the BJP National Working Committee when the party came to power in 2014 in the Centre.
He thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president J P Nadda and other party leaders after he was selected. As the CM of the state, he will fulfil the PM’s guarantees for the state.
In the recently conducted elections, BJP won 54 seats in the 90-member Assembly, when Congress reduced to 35.