Tribal leader Vishnu Deo is Chhattisgarh’s new CM BJP MLAs elect him as CLP leader

Vishnu Deo Sai, a prominent tribal face of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Chhattisgarh, will be state chief minister after he was elected as leader of BJP’s legislative party during a meeting of 54 newly-elected MLAs here on Sunday.
Incidentally, addressing a poll rally in the Kunkuri constituency last month, Union Home Minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah had urged voters to elect Sai (59), promising to make the latter a “big man” if the party comes back to power in the state.
The BJP won 54 seats in the 90-member Assembly in the recently held polls, while the Congress was reduced to 35 seats from the 68 it won in 2018.
The BJP, which had suffered a huge setback in tribal-dominated seats in 2018, put up a good show this time, winning 17 of the 29 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates.
The saffron outfit won all the 14 assembly segments in the tribal-dominated Surguja region and eight out of the 12 seats in another Adivasi belt Bastar.
The BJP’s comprehensive win in the two tribal turfs contributed in its resounding victory in the Assembly polls and return to power in the state after a gap of five years. Sai started his political career as a village sarpanch and rose to become a Union minister and multiple-time Lok Sabha MP besides getting important organisational roles.
The newly-elected MLA from Jashpur district in the Surguja region perfectly fits in the BJP’s scheme of things since Adivasis account for nearly 32 per cent of the state’s population and are the second most dominant social group after OBCs.
Despite inheriting a rich political legacy of his family and holding key portfolios when he was a Union minister, the tribal leader is known for his humility, down to earth nature, dedication to work and determination to achieve goals.
Sai has headed the BJP’s Chhattisgarh unit three times, displaying the central leadership’s faith in his organisational skills.
Starting his political career as the sarpanch of an obscure village, Sai rose through the ranks and became a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first Council of Ministers after the BJP formed its full majority government at the Centre in 2014. Though he hails from a farming family based in a small village, Bagia, in the tribal-dominated Jashpur district, politics runs in the blood of the BJP leader.
His grandfather late Budhnath Sai was a nominated MLA from 1947 to 1952. His ‘bade pitaji’ (elder brother of his father) late Narhari Prasad Sai was a member of the Jan Sangh (BJP’s predecessor) and served as a two-term MLA (1962-67 and 1972-77) and was elected as an MP (1977-79) and served as a Minister of State in the Janata Party government.