Former Union minister Vishnu Deo Sai selected as new Chhattisgarh CM

Former Chhattisgarh BJP president and ex-Union minister of state Vishnu Deo Sai will be the next chief minister of Chhattisgarh. Sai, won the recently concluded assembly polls from Kunkuri in north Chhattisgarh, a region the BJP has swept. (Photo credit: PTI)

He hails from the influential Sahu (Teli) community which has a sizable presence in the Durg, Raipur and Bilaspur divisions. (Photo credit: ANI)

Sai called on state governor Bishwabhushan Harichandan and staked his claim to form the government. In 1990, Sai was elected as 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. (Photo credit: ANI)

Union home minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah had urged voters to elect Sai, promising to make the latter a "big man" if the party comes back to power in the state. (Photo credit: ANI)

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 tribal leader was a union minister from 2014 to 2019 in the first Narendra Modi Cabinet. (Photo credit: ANI)

After being entrusted with the state's top job, Sai thanked PM Modi, Shah, BJP president JP Nadda and other party leaders for reposing faith in him. "As the chief minister, I will try to fulfil PM Modi's guarantees (pre-poll promises of the BJP) through the government," Sai told reporters.

Ahead of the state assembly elections, held in two phases on November 7 and 17, both the Congress and BJP had tried hard to woo farmers, women and the poor with populist schemes. It seems the promises made by the BJP, which it promoted as 'Modi ki Guarantee 2023', worked in its favour. (Photo credit: Agencies)