New Delhi: Four-time MP and former Union minister Vishnu Deo Sai took oath as Chhattisgarh’s first tribal chief minister Wednesday, before a lustrous gathering of party leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan also administered oath to Chattisgarh BJP chief and OBC face Arun Sao and Brahmin leader Vijay Sharma, the new deputy chief ministers.
The 59-year-old Sai was chosen for the top job at a legislative party meeting on 10 December, a week after the BJP snatched back power from the ruling Congress.
VIDEO | Vishnu Deo Sai sworn in as Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh in Raipur. pic.twitter.com/mS6Aq84JcK
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) December 13, 2023
The party won 54 of the state’s 90 assembly seats in a decisive victory which was bolstered by tribal votes, especially in the Bastar and Surguja districts. Incumbent Congress got only 35 seats.
Sai won from the Kunkuri constituency, defeating sitting Congress MLA U.D. Minj. On the national stage, he was the sole representative from Chhattisgarh in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first cabinet of 2014.
Sai’s swearing-in ceremony was the second in the day for Modi and Shah — the first being the oath-taking of the Madhya Pradesh chief minister and his two deputies.
The BJP, which decisively won the key heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in a head-to-head contest with the Congress, had gone campaigning this time without a chief ministerial face.
Within a week of the results, the high command closed on fresh faces for the top job — Sai in Chhattisgarh, Mohan Yadav in Madhya Pradesh and first-time MLA and organisation man Bhajanlal Sharma in Rajasthan. Each chief minister was also given two deputies.
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