Raipur, Aug 17 (PTI) With an eye on the next year’s Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday elected its three-time MLA Narayan Chandel as the new legislative party leader.
Chandel will be the Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly replacing senior leader Dharamlal Kaushik.
Both Chandel (57) and Kaushik (64) belong to the Kurmi caste – a numerically powerful Other Backward Class (OBC) community in the state.
Notably, the BJP had last week appointed party MP Arun Sao, also an OBC, as Chhattisgarh unit chief in place of senior tribal leader Vishnu Deo Sai.
According to political experts, the BJP seems to be coming up with a bigger strategy by appointing two little-known faces to the key posts in Chhattisgarh, which it had ruled for 15 years before ceding the ground to Congress in the 2018 assembly polls.
However, it could also be part of a strategy to consolidate the OBC vote bank which largely drifted away from the saffron party in the last elections, they said.
Chandel, the MLA from the Janjgir-Champa constituency, was appointed as the BJP’s legislative party leader by party MLAs during the legislative party meeting held at the state BJP office Kushabhau Thakre Parisar, a party leader said.
BJP’s state in-charge D Purandeswari was present at the meeting, the party leader said.
Kaushik was appointed opposition leader after the BJP suffered a huge defeat at the hands of Congress in the 2018 polls.
Chandel, who started his political career in the early 1990s, had served as the Deputy Speaker of the state assembly from 2010-11 during the Raman Singh government’s second term from 2008 to 2013.
He was first elected as an MLA in the undivided Madhya Pradesh assembly in 1998.
Later, he was elected as an MLA in the Chhattisgarh assembly in 2008 and 2018 and served in various capacities in the party.
Talking to reporters, Chandel said the legislative party has unanimously elected him as the Leader of Opposition and he will discharge his responsibilities by taking everyone together.
Targeting the Bhupesh Baghel government, he termed it the “government of lies and deceit” and claimed that people will overthrow it in the next elections.
“Like Sao, Chandel is also an undisputed leader and does not belong to any group in the faction-ridden BJP’s state unit”, said senior political analyst R Krishna Das.
He said the BJP’s move to pick an OBC leader as the state unit chief and continue with the OBC face for the post of leader of opposition seems to be aimed at reaching out to the community that constitutes a major portion of the state population and considerably influences poll outcomes.
In Chhattisgarh, the OBCs account for around 45 per cent of the over 2.55 crore population of the state.
In the 2018 assembly elections, the OBCs largely supported Congress and ensured its landslide victory.
Taking a dig, Congress communication wing chief Sushil Anand Shukla said the BJP seems “very much afraid of the popularity of the state government and the success of its welfare schemes so much so that it had to change its state unit chief and the leader of the opposition”.
“In the last four years, the BJP changed its state chief thrice and now changed the opposition leader which indicates the saffron party has failed to find a face to lead,” he added.
In the 90-member Chhattisgarh Assembly, the Congress has 71 MLAs, BJP 14, while the JCC (J) and BSP have three and two members, respectively. PTI TKP NP NSK NSK
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.