Following the footsteps of Ajit Jogi, the first chief minister of Chhattisgarh, the collector of Raipur, IAS officer Om Prakash Choudhary on Saturday resigned from service to join politics.
Choudhary, an IAS officer of the 2005 batch, is a resident of Raigarh district in Chhattisgarh. Choudhary hails from the backward Agharia community, which has a sizeable population in Raigarh district.
Choudhary came into the limelight when he established an education city for tribals in South Bastar when he was collector of Dantewada. He was later posted as commissioner of the municipal corporation of Raipur and later became director of public relations, a post that holds immense importance for the government and chief minister.
Over the last few months, there have been rumours of Choudhary quitting the IAS and joining politics. He is likely to join the BJP and contest the coming assembly polls from Raigarh.
Choudhary on Saturday announced his decision on his Facebook page, which has thousands of followers as he was popular as a youth icon in Chhattisgarh. Very few native people from Chhattisgarh are in the IAS.
Choudhary's announcement and decision to join politics attracted the usual response from social media.
By 5.30pm on Saturday, just two hours after Choudhary put up a post on Facebook on his decision to resign, over 7,000 people liked the post and over 2,000 commented on it.
Choudhary has formally not said anything about the party he is joining, but it is an 'open secret' that he is close to the BJP and Chief Minister Raman Singh.
In 1986, another IAS officer from Chhattisgarh (then a part of Madhya Pradesh), Ajit Jogi, resigned from service when he was collector of Indore. Jogi was made a Rajya Sabha member after Rajiv Gandhi asked him to join the Congress.
Jogi later became the first chief minister of the state when Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in November 2000. Choudhary seems to be following the footsteps of Jogi, who now runs a regional political party named Chhattisgarh Janta Congress.