Ranchi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s Jharkhand unit vice-president, Raghubar Das, is likely to be elected as the new Chief Minister of the state today when the party legislators meet in Ranchi, sources said.
The first meeting of newly elected legislators will be presided over by party's central observers JP Nadda and V Sahasrabuddhe.
Raghubar Das won the Jamshedpur East constituency by over 70,000 votes. If elected, he will become the state's first non-tribal Chief Minister. Ever since Jharkhand was separated from Bihar in 2000, five tribal chief ministers have taken charge of the state for nine different tenures.
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Das was the deputy CM of the state between December 30, 2009 and May 29, 2010. A former employee of Tata Steel, Das originally hails from Chhattisgarh. He has been Jamshedpur (East) MLA since 1995.
The BJP has 37 MLAs in the 81-member Assembly while its ally AJSU has five.
Meanwhile, the BJP Parliamentary Party yesterday decided to send Arun Jaitley and Arun Singh to oversee the formation of new government in Jammu and Kashmir.
The two leaders will be in Srinagar today where they will meet the newly elected 25 MLAs of the party and will also explore possibilities of forming government with the support of the NC and PDP.
BJP emerged as the second largest party with 25 seats followed by PDP which won 28 seats. The NC and Congress managed to bag only 15 and 12 seats, respectively.
The Legislative Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir comprises 87 members.
