NEW DELHI: The Saffron BJP today ended the suspense over the selection for the chief ministerial post in Chhattisgarh by nominating prominent tribal leader Vishnu Dev Sai for the top post. Tribal leader in the run-up to 2024 general election.He was elected as leader of the BJP’s legislature party at the meeting of the 54 newly-elected MLAs.

Naming Mr Sai as the Chief Minister is a significant move in the state Adivasis account for nearly 32 per cent of the population and are the second most dominant social group after OBCs.
The selection – made after a week of deliberations — is along the lines of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s idea of having a tribal leader as the Chief Minister of the state, where tribals form 32 per cent of the population. They are the largest population group in the state after the Other Backward Classes — a situation that had initially left the BJP torn between picking a tribal and an OBC member. .
The decision, however, went in favour of tribals in view of the party’s unprecedented performance in the states’ tribal areas. The BJP, never on top of tribals’ list of favourites, had managed to turn around the mood and corner all 14 assembly seats in the tribal-dominated Surguja region and eight of the 12 seats in Bastar.
However, a few weeks before this announcement, Union Minister Amit Shah had given a big hint while campaigning for Mr Sai ahead of the Chhattisgarh Assembly elections.  Addressing an election rally in Kunkuri, Mr Shah said, “You make him (Vishnu Dev Sai) an MLA, we will do the work of making him a big man.” Won by defeating sitting Congress MLA UD Minj by 25,541 votes. Kunkuri seat is in Surguja division of the state where the BJP has won all 14 constituencies.
Sai said “As the Chief Minister, I will try to fulfil PM Modi’s guarantees (pre-poll promises of the BJP) through the government,” Mr Sai said after the meeting. Mr Sai started his political career as a village sarpanch and rose to become a Union minister and multiple-time Lok Sabha MP. He also held various key positions within the party. He served as the State President of the BJP for Chhattisgarh from 2020 to 2022. He has also been a member of the National Executive Committee of the BJP. He was the Union Minister of State for Steel in the first Narendra Modi government.
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. Significantly, the party, which had suffered a huge setback in tribal-dominated seats in 2018, won all the 14 assembly segments in the tribal-dominated Surguja region and eight out of the 12 seats in another Adivasi belt Bastar.
Sai began his political career in 1989 as the Panch of Bagiya Gram Panchayat. In 1990, he contested and won elections for the first time from the Tapkara assembly constituency in the district and became an MLA of undivided Madhya Pradesh. Sai also holds significant experience working within the organization. The party entrusted him with the responsibility of the state president twice in 2006 and 2020.

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