Chhattisgarh on Wednesday got its two Deputy Chief Ministers, Arun Sao and Vijay Sharma, for the first time since its formation in 2000.
The two, also first time legislators, have held several positions in the saffron party.
Sao is a prominent Other Backward Class (OBC) leader while Sharma is a Brahmin.
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 won from Lormi seat by 45,891 votes against his nearest rival Thaneshwar Sahu of the Congress.
Sao earlier was elected from the Bilaspur Lok Sabha seat by 1.41 lakh votes.
A year before the Assembly elections, the 54-year-old MP was made President of the Chhattisgarh BJP unit replacing prominent tribal leader Vishnu Deo Sai, now the Chief Minister.
Sao hails from the influential Sahu OBC community.
Vijay Sharma, the other Deputy Chief Minister, is a Brahmin and a vocal supporter of Hindutva. In recent elections, he trounced Congress leader and minister Mohammad Akbar in the Kawardha constituency by 39,592 votes.
Sharma (50) was arrested on charges of rioting in connection with communal violence in Kawardha town in Kabirdham district in October 2021.
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.
