Bhupesh Baghel Appointed Chhattisgarh Chief Minister
Baghel, 57, a prominent Dalit leader in the state has been credited with leading Congress to victory in Chhattisgarh.
The Congress Party has selected Bhupesh Baghel, its party president in the Chhattisgarh, as the state’s chief minister after he lead them to a resounding victory in the assembly elections.
The decision comes after Congress President Rahul Gandhi held discussions with top party members over the weekend for selecting the chief minister of the Naxal-affected state. Gandhi held several rounds of discussions on Saturday with the four aspirants for the post—TS Singh Deo, Tamradhwaj Sahu, Bhupesh Baghel and Charan Das Mahant—at his Tughlaq Lane residence in New Delhi.
Baghel, 57, is a prominent Dalit leader of the Kurmi caste and hails from Chattisgarh's Durg district. He had won from the Patan constituency.
One of the lesser known faces in Congress, Baghel was appointed the transport minister in Digvijaya Singh's cabinet in Madhya Pradesh, before Chhattisgarh was carved out. After that, he held the post in Ajit Jogi’s cabinet.
After losing in the 2008 assembly elections, Baghel had staged a comeback in 2013 and then rose to become the president of the Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee.