Narayan Chandel is new Leader of Opposition
   Date :18-Aug-2022

Narayan Chandel  
 
 
Staff Reporter
RAIPUR, 
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narayan Chandel has been elected as the new leader of Opposition in Chhattisgarh Vidhan Sabha, replacing Dharamlal Kaushik. Chhattisgarh State In-charge D Purandeshwari announced Chandel’s name at a meeting of BJP MLAs.
BJP National Leadership appears to be forming a new team of leaders to lead BJP in the next Chhattisgarh assembly election with the appointment of the new leader of the opposition. The meeting was also attended by Joint In-charge Nitin Naveen and organization general secretary Ajay Jamwal.
The name of Narayan Chandel was finalised after a discussion with the national leadership. BJP is speculated to be betting on OBC votes in next election after the appointment of Arun Sao as the state president and Narayan Chandel as leader of the opposition (LoP).
The names Ajay Chandrakar, Brijmohan Agrawal and Shivratan Sharma were in the race for LoP.
If party sources are to be believed senior leaders had asked Dharamlal Kaushik to relinquish the LoP post. Since Dharamlal Kaushik and Arun Sao are both from Bilaspur. Even Narayan Chandel who is MLA from Janjgir Champa also had Bilaspur as his political yard. The party has not made any attempt to give representation geographically but the effort was to elect a leader who could make a formidable attack on the ruling party and bare their misrule so that in this election year at least the BJP could regain the lost face, stated a party leader. BJP National Leadership might have realized that many Congress OBC leaders had won the last election with a landslide. So, they decided to place their bets on an OBC leader. With this change in the leadership, the BJP has put the tribal and the SC leaders in a political oblivion, a charge now being levelled against the BJP. Narayan Chandel has been elected as an MLA from Janjgir-Champa thrice. He was born in a farmer family at Naila of Janjgir district on April 19, 1965. He was first elected in undivided MP in 1998. He had been State Secretary and State Vice-President of Yuva Morcha from 1994 to 1998. He became District General Secretary in 2000 and member of several committees of Vidhan Sabha, State President of Kisan Morcha, and State General Secretary from 2001 to 2002.Vidhan Sabha Samiti member from 2002 to 2004. Chhattisgarh Backward Category Commission Chairman from 2007 to 2008, Government Enterprise Committee Chairman, and members of several committees from 2009 to 2010, and then held the post of Deputy Speaker at Vidhan Sabha from 2010 to 2011. He was a special-invitee member from 2011 to 2014 and a member of several other committees from 2019 to till date. Starting his political career as a Yuva Morcha worker, Narayan Chandel defeated Motilal Dewangan of Congress in the 2018 Vidhan Sabha election. BJP State General Secretary Chandel will now be the sixth leader of Opposition.