The BJP appeared to have focussed on ensuring regional balance in Chhattisgarh as it appointed first-time MLA Kiran Singh Deo, who hails from Bastar division in the southern part, as its state chief.
Over a week ago, the party had appointed Vishnu Deo Sai, who comes from the Surguja division in northern Chhattisgarh, as the chief minister.
BJP national president Jagat Prakash Nadda has appointed MLA Kiran Singh Deo as BJP Chhattisgarh unit president, read a notification issued by the party’s general secretary Arun Kumar on Thursday.
Deo will replace BJP legislator Arun Sao, who assumed the charge of Chhattisgarh deputy chief minister after the party’s stunning victory in the recently concluded assembly polls.
Deo (61) hails from the Kashtriya community, a general category caste. He won the Jagdalpur assembly seat in Bastar district. 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.
The BJP, which had suffered a huge setback in tribal-dominated seats in 2018, put up a good show this time, winning 17 of the 29 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribe (ST) candidates.
It won all the 14 assembly segments in the tribal-dominated Surguja region and eight out of the 12 seats in another Adivasi belt Bastar. The BJP’s comprehensive win in the two tribal turfs contributed to its resounding victory in the assembly polls and return to power in the state after five years.
The party has exercised a regional balance by giving two top posts, one in the government and the other in the organisation, to leaders from both regions, political analyst R Krishna Das said.
Deo, a low-profile leader, has donned many hats within the party in the last two-and-a-half decades and is said to know very well how to take people along, Das said. Deo started his political career as the president of the students’ union of govt PG College, Jagdalpur, in 1985-86.
In 1998, he became the vice president of the Bastar district unit of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, BJP’s youth wing, and was elevated to the position of president of the same unit in 2002.
In the same year, he became BJP’s Bastar district unit president and then went on to serve in various capacities in the party’s state unit. In 2009, he was elected as the mayor of the Jagdalpur Municipal Corporation. From 2018 to 2022, he served as the general secretary of BJP’s state unit.
In the just-concluded assembly elections, Deo defeated Congress’ Jateen Jaiswal by a margin of 29,834 votes in Jagdalpur.
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