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Mohan Yadav, Vishnu Deo Sai take oath as Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh CMs
The BJP won the MP elections bagging 163 of the 230 seats and the Congress got 66 with one seat going to an independent candidate.
Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh got new chief ministers on Wednesday as Mohan Yadav and Vishnu Deo Sai were administered oath of office by the respective governors in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and chief ministers of all Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states.
With Yadav and Sai, their deputies took oath as well. The first to take oath was Yadav with Jagdish Deora and Rajendra Shukla. They were administered oath by MP governor Mangubhai Patel at a brief ceremony held in Motilal Nehru Stadium in Bhopal. “I will take everyone along and ensure good governance,” Yadav told reporters before taking oath.
Health minister in the cabinet of outgoing chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Yadav is third-time MLA from the Ujjain South seat. He belongs to other backward classes (OBC), a group that is a key constituent of the BJP’s rainbow Hindu coalition. Born and brought up in Ujjain, Yadav was the ABVP secretary at the Madhav Vigyan Mahavidyalaya in the city in 1983, and became the body’s president in 1985. From 1993 to 1995, he was the RSS sah-karyavah for Ujjain and in 1996, the leader of the organisation in the temple town. In 2013, he became the MLA from Ujjain South for the first time, and turned it into a bastion for the party. In 2009, as the president of the Madhya Pradesh Culture and Tourism Board, Yadav started a “Vikramutsav”, a programme for research on Maharaj Vikramaditya.
Both Jagdish Deveda, seven-time MLA from Mandsaur, and Rajendra Shukla, six-time MLA, were senior ministers in Chouhan’s cabinet and belong to a scheduled caste and the Brahmin community, respectively. Meanwhile, a group of supporters stopped the vehicle of former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan outside the swearing-in ceremony site for the newly designated Madhya Pradesh CM in Bhopal, chanting slogans and expressing support.
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After oath-taking, Yadav held a meeting with officials at the state secretariat in Bhopal and then went to Mahakal Temple in Ujjain. Later speaking to reporters, he said, “I will work for the development of the state. On January 22, history will be created in India with the inauguration of Ram Temple. A large number of kar sevaks lost their lives and faced trouble while struggling for Ram Temple so we have decided that a special welcome will be done in all the districts of those who will go to Ayodhya on January 22.”
The BJP won the MP elections bagging 163 of the 230 seats and the Congress got 66 with one seat going to an independent candidate.
In the afternoon, Sai was administered oath by governor Biswabhusan Harichandan with his two deputies Arun Sao and Vijay Sharma.
Sai’s name was announced as the Chhattisgarh chief minister on Sunday afternoon after a meeting of the BJP’s newly elected 54 MLAs in Raipur.
Former chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and former deputy CM TS Singh Deo were also present in the ceremony. The PM shook hands with former CM Baghel on the stage before the oath-taking.
Before taking oath, Sai performed rituals at the Jagannath temple in Raipur and prayed for peace, progress and prosperity of Chhattisgarh, a statement issued by the state’s public relations department said. He also paid tributes to freedom fighter Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
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Sai has held various positions, including being a former state unit chief and a former Union minister. He served as state president of the party for Chhattisgarh from 2020 to 2022. He was the Union minister of state for mines and steel in the first PM Modi cabinet. The new chief minister started his political career as a village sarpanch. In 1989, he was elected as a ‘panch’ of Bagia village panchayat and the next year became the sarpanch unopposed. Sai won four consecutive Lok Sabha elections from the Raigarh constituency from 1999 to 2014. He was not given a ticket in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
State BJP president, Sao, 54, started his political career as a volunteer of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and was also a national working committee member of the ABVP. Sao, a first-time MP from the Bilaspur Lok Sabha constituency was made party chief in Chhattisgarh in November 2022. He contested from Lormi constituency and won by a margin of 45,891 votes.
Sharma, 50, is a first-time MLA from Kawardha and is general secretary in the state BJP. Sharma was also the state president of the party’s youth wing, Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha, before he joined the BJP. Known for his strong pro-Hindu image and oratory skills, Sharma defeated senior Congress leader Mohammad Akbar, who was also a cabinet minister in the Baghel cabinet, by a margin of 40,000 votes.
