Months before the BJP formally announced candidates for the West Bengal assembly elections, Suvendu Adhikari had started positioning himself for a contest against chief minister Mamata Banerjee from Bhabanipur. According to BJP sources, Adhikari had well in advance conveyed his interest in being fielded from the South Kolkata seat to the party’s organisational leadership.
That conversation reportedly took place during a visit to a hospital in Khidderpore where BJP leaders had gathered following the death of a party worker from Nadia district. Sources present there said Adhikari directly asked South Kolkata district president Anupam Bhattacharya to send his name as a candidate suggestion for Bhabanipur to the BJP central leadership.
Publicly, both Adhikari and Union home minister Amit Shah have maintained that the decision to field the former from Bhabanipur was taken by the top BJP leadership. However, party insiders now say Adhikari had been preparing for a direct contest against Mamata for several months.
For him, Bhabanipur was not just another constituency. Since Mamata shifted there in 2011 after becoming chief minister, the seat had come to be identified with her leadership. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) had, however, trailed in this assembly segment in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, indicating chances of a breakthrough for the BJP in 2026.
Adhikari’s victory from Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes has added to his heft within the BJP because of the larger context attached to it. In the state elections in 2021, he had narrowly defeated Mamata from Nandigram, by 1,956 votes. This year, Adhikari contested from Nandigram as well as Bhabanipur, winning both.
Within BJP circles, this is being projected as proof that Adhikari’s influence is not limited to East Midnapore or rural Bengal, but that he can take on a heavyweight like Mamata in an urban constituency considered central to the TMC’s identity. Party leaders say the result strengthens his position as the Bengal BJP’s most-significant mass leader and someone directly associated with the party’s rise in the state.
The Bhabanipur candidature also reflected a change in the BJP’s organisational strategy. Unlike previous polls where candidate selection was seen as heavily centralised, the party this time asked district units to send recommendations and multiple options for seats. In that sense, Adhikari ensuring that his name came officially from the South Kolkata organisational unit carried importance. It allowed the candidature to be projected as an organisational recommendation.
The result has also intensified discussions over leadership of the new BJP government in Bengal. Adhikari is being viewed as perhaps the strongest contender for the chief minister’s post because not only did he lead the party’s campaign but personally defeated Mamata in two consecutive elections.
BJP leaders said the party may follow the structure adopted in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh—one chief minister and two deputy chief ministers. According to sources, one of the deputy CMs could be a woman MLA from the Kolkata region, as part of a broader political-balancing exercise.
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