NEW DELHI: Amid hectic lobbying in the Congress for the top post in Chhattisgarh, party president Rahul Gandhi will hold deliberations at his residence after which the names of the chief ministers would be declared today. The flight of Air India in which the three CM contenders  Bhupesh Baghel, TS Singh Deo and Charan Das Mahant were going to Delhi, was diverted to Nagpur due to flight fog.

All eyes now were on party president Rahul Gandhi's choice of chief ministers of the state and ABP News sources say that T S Singhdeo is likely to be the next CM of the state. Singhdeo was the main architect of the Congress party's poll manifesto, which he said was made after feedback from about 80,000 people from across the state. It was this manifesto, especially the promises relating to farmers, that many believe became a game-changer in the party's bid to dislodge a populist chief minister.

Belying predictions of exit polls, the Congress won convincingly in Chattisgarh where T S Singhdeo was given the job of mobilising backward community voters who had largely favoured the BJP in the last 2013 polls. In Chattisgarh, the other contenders for the CM post are Lok Sabha member Tamradhwaj Sahu, who won the Durg Rural seat, state party chief Bhupesh Baghel, but Sahu's non-controversial and clean image goes in his favour, some party leaders said.

The Congress victory in Chhattisgarh ended the 15-year rule of the Raman Singh-led Bharatiya Janata Party government. It won 68 seats in the 90-member Assembly, far more than the 46 required to form the government, while the BJP got only 15 seats. After the result, BJP’s Raman Singh submitted his resignation to Governor Anandiben Patel and said he accepts responsibility for BJP's poor showing.

Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi described the party's good showing in the Hindi heartland states as a victory over the BJP's "negative politics".