Suvendu Adhikari to become West Bengal's first BJP chief minister after Mamata Banerjee defeat

Suvendu Adhikari completed one of Bengal’s sharpest political reversals on May 8, 2026, when the Bharatiya Janata Party named him its legislative leader in Kolkata and set him on course to become West Bengal’s first BJP chief minister. The move closed the long era of Mamata Banerjee’s rule, after three consecutive terms, and turned a bitter personal rivalry into the defining story of the state’s latest power shift.

Adhikari’s ascent began with his rupture from the Trinamool Congress in December 2020, when he left one of Banerjee’s closest circles and crossed to the BJP ahead of the 2021 Assembly election. In Nandigram, he then dealt Banerjee a defeat by 1,956 votes, a result that made him more than just a party convert. He became the face of the BJP’s challenge to a system long built around Banerjee’s personal authority.

That rivalry deepened in 2026, when Adhikari beat Banerjee again in Bhabanipur by more than 15,000 votes. The margin underscored how far the state’s politics had moved from a personality-driven Trinamool machine to a direct BJP-versus-TMC contest. Banerjee refused to resign immediately after the election, said the BJP’s mandate did not reflect the true public mandate, and alleged irregularities, but the BJP treated the result as the clearest sign yet that its base had expanded decisively in Bengal.

The party’s choice of Adhikari also mattered because of what he represents. He comes from a prominent political family in East Midnapore, and his movement from TMC insider to BJP standard-bearer captures the coalition breakdown that helped reshape West Bengal. For years, the state’s opposition space was split between the Left’s decline and the TMC’s dominance. Adhikari’s rise shows that the BJP has now broken into that structure, building a direct confrontation with Banerjee rather than relying on fragmented anti-TMC politics.

In practice, Adhikari is likely to be a hard-edged chief minister, shaped less by consensus than by electoral combat. He enters office not as an administrative compromise figure, but as the man who twice defeated Mamata Banerjee and helped turn the BJP’s Hindu nationalist expansion into governing power in a state once thought resistant to it. On May 9, 2026, that transformation was set to become official.