West Bengal gets its ‘Dada’! Suvendu Adhikari to take oath as BJP’s first CM in the state

BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, on Friday, was declared as the next Chief Minister of West Bengal by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. He will meet Bengal Governor RN Ravi at around 6:30 pm today and present the consent letter with the signatures of all MLAs.

Taking a jibe at the outgoing CM Mamata Banerjee, Shah said, “Didi, this time, Suvendu da (Adhikari) has beaten you in your home.” He further said now that the BJP is in power in Assam and Tripura and will form the government in Bengal tomorrow, infiltration and cow-smuggling would be impossible. 

With this, Adhikari is the first BJP leader to head a government in Bengal. He is set to take the oath as the Chief Minister of West Bengal on Saturday (May 9) at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, BJP national president Nitin Nabin, Union Ministers, and Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states will be present at the oath-taking ceremony.

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He was long seen as a frontrunner for the CM office, especially after the saffron party repeatedly said that the state would get a “son of the soil” chief minister who is rooted in Bengal’s linguistic and cultural identity. 

The Mamata confidante-turned rival told reporters earlier this week that he would vacate one of the two seats in the next 10 days, stating that the final decision would be that of the BJP leadership. “I will not forget my responsibility towards the people of Bhabanipur and Nandigram,” he said.

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Addressing party workers after the BJP’s landslide victory, Adhikari said that the moment marked the “real change” in West Bengal’s politics. 

“I was part of the 2011 poribartan, and now I am part of the real change,” he had said. Showing confidence in the BJP’s long-term future in Bengal, he noted that the party would work in a way  “that the BJP government in Bengal stays for 100 years”.

Suvendu Adhikari contested and won from the Nandigram and Bhabanipur assembly seats in the recently conducted polls. In Bhabanipur, the BJP leader defeated Mamata by a margin of over 15,000 votes and secured 73,917 votes. From Nandigram, Adhikari won against the Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s Pabitra Kar by a margin of 9,665 votes. 

In West Bengal, the BJP breached Mamata’s citadel with confidence by winning 207 out of the total 293 seats. The TMC, on the other hand, folded to 80 seats. The Congress and Humayun Kabir-led Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP) won 2 seats each. The CPI(M) and AISF bagged one seat each.