Tribal leader Vishnu Deo Sai is the new Chhattisgarh chief minister

Tribal leader and former Union Minister Vishnu Deo Sai is the BJP's pick as the next Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh. Sai became the president of the Chhattisgarh unit of the party in 2006 and has been a member of the BJP National Working Committee.

The Bharatiya Janata Party picked Vishnu Deo Sai as the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh on Sunday. A prominent figure in the BJP, Sai served as State President of the party for Chhattisgarh from 2020 until 2022. 

Vishnu Deo Sai received 87,604 votes to win the Kunkuri Assembly seat. Deo Sai, a former BJP state chief, was widely expected to be the party's first option for a tribal face. He has held several positions, including Union Minister of State for Steel in the first Modi government and Member of Parliament for Chhattisgarh's Raigarh seat in the 16th Lok Sabha.

Sai also won four consecutive Lok Sabha elections from the Raigarh constituency in 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014. Before that, he won two consecutive Assembly elections in 1990 and 1993 from the Tapkara constituency in undivided Madhya Pradesh.

The legislator has declared his total assets worth Rs 2.16 crores. As per his public records available on the Election Commission’s website, Sai did his higher secondary schooling at Loyola Higher Secondary School, Jashpur’s Kunkuri.

The BJP contested the recently concluded Chhattisgarh Assembly polls without declaring any CM face. The BJP won a landslide victory, securing 54 out of the total 90 seats.