After poll result, focus on 4-horse race to top post

From a Rajput family in Chhattisgarh’s Kawardha, 71-year-old Raman Singh is a three time chief minister who ruled over the state from 2003 to 2018. A former union minister, Singh took over after the BJP beat the Ajit Jogi led Congress in 2003, and quickly became known as “chawal vale baba”, strengthening the state’s public distribution system. He was in power for fifteen straight years before anti-incumbency caught up with him, and the BJP crashed to 15 seats in 2018. Singh however has re-emerged as a key component of the BJP win in the state, and with Lok Sabha elections in 2024, is a steady hand if the party wants to choose stability.

The 54-year-old Arun Sao, who began his political career as a volunteer of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, rose to win his first Lok Sabha election from Bilaspur in 2019, and was made state party president in November 2022. A lawyer by profession and a former deputy advocate general in the BJP tenure. Sao will have credit in the bank after pulling off the unlikeliest of electoral wins among the Hindi heartland states, and may also be in the running because he is a Sahu, the most influential of OBC communities that have moved decisively to the BJP.

A dark horse for the post of chief minister is former IAS officer turned politician OP Choudhary who fought the elections from Raigarh and won with a record margin of 64,000 votes. The 2005 batch officer who was once district collector of Dantewada, where he brought in several schemes for the education of children in Bastar, joined the BJP in August 2018. A “son of the soil”, Choudhary is from the Agharia caste, an influential OBC group in rural Chhattisgarh, and has been seen as a future leader for the BJP. During his campaign, Amit Shah, who took out a roadshow in his constituency of Raigarh said that the people had to make him win, and the responsibility of making him a “big man” was the home minister’s.

If the BJP wants to pick a tribal face as its chief minister, rewarding a clear tribal shift towards the BJP by the community, one option before the leadership is 59-year-old Vishnu Dev Sai, former union minister of state and Chhattisgarh BJP president. Sai was president for four years between 2018 and 2022, and has won the elections from Kunkuri in north Chhattisgarh, a region the BJP has swept. The other tribal options that the party may consider is Ramvichar Netam, also from Surguja and a former Rajya Sabha MP, Renuka Singh, union minister of state, and Lata Usendi, national vice president who beat Congress heavyweight and former Congress president Mohan Markam.