 "(From left) Vishnu Deo Sai with Union Cabinet Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and BJP leader Dushyant Kumar Gautam, in Raipur on Sunday. Photo: PTI")
Vishnu Deo Sai, a prominent tribal face of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is set to become the next chief minister of Chhattisgarh. After being elected leader of the BJP's legislature party on Sunday afternoon, Sai was invited by Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan to form government in the state.
The swearing-in of the new chief minister may take place either on December 12 or December 13, according to the availability of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a senior BJP leader was quoted as saying in a PTI report.
BJP sources said former Chief Minister Raman Singh will be elected the Speaker of the Assembly, while the party’s state unit chief Arun Sao and Vijay Sharma are poised to become deputy CMs. Incidentally, both are first-time state legislators although Sao, an Other Backward Classes (OBC), was a Bilaspur MP. He had quit the Lok Sabha after being elected to the Assembly.
Sai would be the state’s first tribal chief minister in 20 years. Ajit Jogi, then a tribal leader in the Congress, was interim CM of the state from its inception on November 1, 2000, until the first Assembly elections three years later.
The announcement of Sai’s elevation was made after a meeting of BJP’s state legislators and central observers Arjun Munda, Sarbananda Sonowal, and Dushyant Gautam in Raipur.
Following the announcement, Sai promised to fulfil Modi’s guarantee of constructing 1.8 million homes in the state.
With Sai's elevation, the BJP has acknowledged the overwhelming support it received from the Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the state in the recently concluded Assembly polls.
According to the 2011 Census, 31 per cent of Chhattisgarh's population is tribal.
In his victory speech in New Delhi on Sunday, Prime Minister Modi noted how STs supported the BJP in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan.
Sai won from the Kunkuri Assembly seat, defeating Congress's U D Minj by 25,541 votes.
Addressing a poll rally in the Kunkuri constituency last month, Union Home Minister Amit Shah urged voters to elect Sai, promising to make him a "big man" if the party comes back to power in the state.
This was BJP's best-ever performance in Chhattisgarh since 2003, winning 54 seats with an unprecedented 46.27 per cent vote share on the back of an improved showing in the tribal areas.
The BJP won all 14 seats in Sarguja and eight of Bastar's 12.
According to sources, Sai enjoys a good rapport with Singh and has also worked for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Meanwhile, Sai vowed that on December 25, the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, his government will release a two-year bonus of paddy to farmers.
In its manifesto titled “Modi's guarantees for Chhattisgarh”, the BJP promised to launch the ‘Krishi Unnati Scheme’ under which its government would purchase 21 quintals of paddy per acre from farmers at Rs 3,100 per quintal.
The Centre recently hiked the minimum support price for paddy to Rs 2,183 per quintal.
Sai began his political career as a sarpanch in Jashpur district's Bagia village in 1989 and was elected to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly in 1990 from Tapkara.
Sai is a two-term MLA and a four-term Lok Sabha member from Raigad from 1999 to 2014.
He was the Union Minister of State for Steel at the Centre from 2014 to 2019.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP dropped all its 10 Chhattisgarh Lok Sabha MPs, including Sai, after the Congress decimated the saffron party in the December 2018 Assembly polls.
On two occasions, he served as the BJP's state unit chief. Sai hails from a political family. His uncle Narhari Prasad was a two-term legislator, an MP, and a minister in the Janata Party government in 1977.
Budhnath Sai, his grandfather, was a nominated MLA from 1947 to 1952.
Sai's council of ministers could include Lok Sabha members who successfully contested in the Assembly polls, who have now quit the Lok Sabha, including Gomati Sai, former Union minister Renuka Singh, and Sao.
