Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Mohan Charan Majhi took oath as the new Chief Minister of Odisha at Janata Maidan on Wednesday evening. He was administered the oath of office by Odisha Governor Raghubar Das, in a grand ceremony attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states.
With this, Majhi also became the first Chief Minister from the saffron party as the 24-year-old tenure of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) chief Naveen Patnaik ended following a massive defeat in the State Assembly elections. Apart from PM Modi, BJP chief JP Nadda, Union Ministers Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Bhupender Yadav, Dharmendra Pradhan, Jual Oram, Ashwini Vaishnaw and others attended the ceremony.
In the recently-held Assembly elections, Majhi won the Keonjhar seat with a margin of around 87,815 votes. He defeated BJD’s Mina Majhi from the constituency.Earlier in the day, Majhi, a four-term MLA, said work will begin within 100 days of the formation of the new government to fulfil the promises made in the BJP’s manifesto.
He was elected leader of the BJP legislature party in Odisha at a meeting held on Tuesday. Mohan Majhi, who started his career as a Sarpanch from 1997-2000, was elected to the state assembly for the first time in 2000 from Keonjhar with the BJD-BJP alliance. He was re-elected in 2004. From 2005 to 09, he was the government deputy chief whip in the BJD-BJP coalition government. He was again elected as an MLA in 2019.
Meanwhile, BJP leaders Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo and Pravati Parida were also sworn-in as Deputy Chief Ministers of Odisha. Notably, the BJP had ruled the state as an alliance partner of the BJD in 2000 and 2004 and this is the first time that the party formed the government on its own in Odisha.