Chhattisgarh BJP president Arun Sao and general secretary Vijay Sharma, who took oath as deputy chief ministers on Wednesday, are first-time MLAs and have held organisational positions in their political careers and considered close to the RSS.
Both come from diverse social backgrounds – Sao is a prominent OBC leader, while Sharma is a Brahmin. This is the first time the state has had two deputy CMs since its formation in 2000.
BJP’s impressive performance in the state brought Sao under the spotlight who was also seen as a potential candidate for the chief ministerial position.
The lawyer-turned-politician is seen as a non-controversial and neutral leader with no affiliation to any group in the BJP’s state unit but with a humble but aggressive personality.
Sao won the Lormi assembly seat by 45,891 votes against his nearest rival from Congress’ Thaneshwar Sahu.
It is said that in the 2019 parliamentary elections, Sao, who lacked experience in electoral politics, had won the Bilaspur Lok Sabha seat by a margin of 1.41 lakh votes riding on the Modi wave.
A year before the assembly elections, the 54-year-old MP was made the president of the Chhattisgarh BJP unit replacing prominent tribal leader Vishnu Deo Sai, who took oath as the chief minister in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Wednesday.
Sao, who hails from the influential Sahu OBC community, is known for his strong base among the lower cadre and was touted by political experts as a good choice for the position of state BJP chief to mobilise party workers ahead of the assembly polls.
According to political experts, the OBC face was elevated to the key post as the Sahu community constitutes a major portion of the state’s population and considerably influences the poll outcomes in 51 general seats in the 90-member assembly.
The move was also seen as a counter to the Congress’s biggest OBC face and former CM Bhupesh Baghel, who projects himself as "son of the soil".
A lawyer by profession, Sao was earlier a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and other organisations since 1990. He was also an RSS worker.
Sao was instrumental in targeting the Bhupesh Baghel government over alleged scams and openly accused it of conspiring "targeted killing" of his party workers in Bastar leaders by Maoists this year.
Vijay Sharma, the second deputy CM, is a Brahmin and a vocal supporter of Hindutva. In the recent elections, he trounced influential Congress leader and then minister Mohammad Akbar in the Kawardha constituency by 39,592 votes.
Notably, Sharma (50) was arrested on the charges of rioting in connection with communal violence in Kawardha town in Kabirdham district in October 2021.
A communal clash had broken out over the removal of religious flags from a thoroughfare in Kawardha. Two days after the incident, some right-wing outfits took out a protest rally during which violence erupted.
BJP MP Santosh Pandey, former MP Abhishek Singh and Vijay Sharma were named in the FIR on charges of rioting, abetting the riot and others by the police in connection with the violence. Sharma was arrested and later released on bail.
Sharma started his political career as a joint convener of the Kawardha city unit of ABVP.
From 2004 to 2010, he headed the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morch’s (BJYM) Kabirdham district unit. He served as BJYM’s Chhattisgarh unit president from 2016 to 2020. In 2020, he was elected as a member of Kabirdham Zila Panchayat.
The BJP won 54 out of 90 seats in Chhattisgarh, bringing down the Congress’ tally to 35 from 68 seats it had won in 2018. The Gondwana Gantantra Party managed to win one constituency.
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