Vishnu Deo Sai, who started his political career as a panch (member of the village panchayat) was appointed as the new chief minister of Chhattisgarh on Sunday. He will be the first tribal to head the state.
Sai, who belongs to the Kanwar tribe, hails from the Kansabel area in Bagiya village, with an agricultural background. He has been active in state politics since 1989.
Kanwar are the second largest tribal community after Gond in Chhattisgarh and have direct influence on 15-20 seats in the northern part of the state.
In 1989, Sai became one of the panch of Bagiya village, and later became the Sarpanch in 1990.
Sai was given an assembly ticket and served as a member of the Legislative Assembly from 1990 to 1998, from the Tapkara constituency in the undivided Madhya Pradesh.
In 1999, he was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from the Raigarh Lok Sabha constituency. In 2006, he was appointed as the state president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Chhattisgarh.
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He won the Raigarh Lok Sabha seat again in the 2009 and 2014 elections.
A prime face of the tribals in the state, Sai also served as a minister in the first cabinet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In the just-concluded assembly elections, Sai was fielded from the Kunkuri, a ST reserved seat in Chhattisgarh where he clinched victory by over 25,000 votes, defeating Congress candidate UD Minj.
He was a prominent candidate in the race for the CM post.
He enjoys good ties with former CM Raman Singh, who was among the frontrunners for the CM post. He is also considered to be close to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He was actively involved in the anti-conversion drive led by the Judeo family in north Chhattisgarh.
