Raipur/IBNS: Tribal leader and former Union Minister Vishnu Deo Sai will be sworn in as Chhattisgarh Chief Minister on Wednesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has announced.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the oath ceremony that will take place at 2pm at Raipur's Science College ground.

Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP chief JP Nadda, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, and several BJP chief ministers and senior leaders will also attend the ceremony.

Sai, known to be favoured by the party's ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is close to former Chief Minister Raman Singh, who has been the party's tallest leader in the state.

Last month, in the run-up to the polls, Amit Shah, addressing a poll rally in Kunkuri, indicated that Sai could be picked for a larger role.

After a five-year interregnum, the saffron camp has surged back to power in this tribal-dominated state by winning 54 of the total 90 Assembly constituencies. The Congress, ruling since 2018, could manage only 35 seats, while the Gondwana Ganatantra Party won from one constituency.

Chhattisgarh – which came into existence in November 2000 after being carved out of Madhya Pradesh – will have the 59-year-old Sai as the second BJP chief minister after Raman Singh who was in the saddle from 2003 to 2018.

In 2014, Sai served as Minister of State in the Centre’s Narendra Modi dispensation. He is a three-time parliamentarian. In 1990, he was first elected to undivided Madhya Pradesh’s Vidhan Sabha from Tapkara.

Sai was born on February 21, 1964, in a cultivator’s household at Jashpur district’s Bagiya village. He studied until the tenth standard at the Loyola Higher Secondary School in Kunkuri.

He commenced his political career in 1989 as a Panch in the Bagiya Village Panchayat. Sai is believed to be the choice of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and also Raman Singh. In 2006 and 2020, he was elevated to BJP state President. He is a special invitee to the party’s National Working Committee.