• Senior BJP leader Vishnu Deo Sai took oath as the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh on December 13.

• State BJP president Arun Sao and general secretary Vijay Sharma, both first-time MLAs, took oath as deputy chief ministers.

• Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan administered the oath of office and secrecy to Sai, 59, and his two deputies during a grand swearing-in ceremony held at the Science College ground in Raipur.

• The BJP won 54 out of 90 seats in Chhattisgarh Assembly elections, bringing down the Congress’ tally to 35 from 68 seats it had won in 2018. The Gondwana Gantantra Party managed to win one constituency.

• Sai is the fourth CM of Chhattisgarh, which was created in the year 2000, and the first tribal CM from the BJP.

• Tribals account for nearly 32 per cent of the total population of the state, making them the second most dominant social group after OBCs. 

From sarpanch to CM

• Though Sai 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.

• Sai’s grandfather (late) Budhnath Sai was a nominated MLA from 1947 to 1952. The 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.

• Sai’s other uncle (late) Kedarnath Sai was also a Jan Sangh member and served as MLA from Tapkara (1967-72).

• Vishnu Deo Sai did his schooling at a government school in Kunkuri and went to Ambikapur for graduation, but quit his studies midway and returned to his village in 1988. 

• In 1989, he was elected as a ‘panch’ of Bagia village panchayat and next year became the ‘sarpanch’ unopposed.

• It was BJP stalwart late Dilip Singh Judev who encouraged Sai to enter electoral politics in 1990. In the same year, Sai was elected as an MLA for the first time on a BJP ticket from Tapkara (in Jashpur district) in undivided Madhya Pradesh. He retained the seat in the 1993 Assembly polls.

• In 1998, he unsuccessfully contested the Assembly polls from the adjoining Pathalgaon seat. Later, he was elected as MP from the Raigarh Lok Sabha constituency four times in a row —  1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014.

• Though the BJP fielded him in the 2003 and 2008 Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, which came into existence as a separate state on November 1, 2000, from Pathalgaon, he lost on both occasions.

• After the BJP formed its government at the Centre in 2014 under the leadership of PM Modi, Sai was inducted into his team and made Minister of State for Steel and Mines.

• He served as the BJP’s Chhattisgarh chief from 2006 to 2010 and again from January to August 2014.

• After the BJP lost power in the state in 2018, he was again given the responsibility to lead the party in Chhattisgarh in 2020. He was replaced with Arun Sao in 2022, just a year ahead of the Assembly polls.

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