Suvendu Adhikari was sworn in as the first Chief Minister of West Bengal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on May 9 at a grand function held at the iconic Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata.
The oath-taking opens a new chapter in Bengali politics with the BJP marching to power for the first time in the state with 207 seats in the 294-member assembly, effectively ending the 15-year rule of the Trinamool Congress, which was reduced to just 80.
The swearing-in was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Chief Ministers of NDA-ruled states, senior BJP leaders and thousands of party workers from across the state.
Along with Adhikari, the five leaders who were sworn in as ministers include Dilip Ghosh, Agnimitra Paul, Ashok Kirtania, Kshudiram Tudu and Nisith Pramanik
For the BJP, the oath-taking ceremony is much more than a constitutional formality. The party is trying to project it as the culmination of a decades-long political expansion in Bengal, a state that for decades has remained among the hardline for the saffron camp despite its vast dominance elsewhere in the country.
The venue has enormous political significance. The country, which once served as a citadel of the Left’s show of strength and later became a battleground for anti-Left and anti-BJP mobilizations, will host the swearing-in of the saffron government in Bengal for the first time.
Party leaders told news agencies that the BJP intends to use the event to signal not only the handover of power but also what it describes as the start of a “new political era” in the state after years of bitter and often violent political polarisation.
Congress to TMC and now BJP
For Adhikari, today’s ceremony is the culmination of a dramatic political journey that has seen him evolve from a grassroots Congress activist to one of the Trinamool Congress’s most influential leaders, before eventually becoming Mamata Banerjee’s main challenger.
Adhikari, once considered one of Banerjee’s closest aides and a key architect of the TMC’s rise in rural Bengal, defected to the BJP in 2020 amid widening divisions and quickly became the most recognizable face of the saffron camp in the state.
His victory over Banerjee in Nandigram in the 2021 assembly elections has already elevated him to a central figure in Bengali politics.
The BJP’s emphatic victory this time has put Adhikari at the center of the party’s bid to reshape the state’s political landscape.
Adhikari, who hails from Purba Medinipur district, will also become the first Bengal chief minister in more than five decades to come from the districts and not the traditional Kolkata political establishment.
The last Chief Minister from rural Bengal was Ajoy Mukherjee in 1970. Incidentally, Mukherjee also hailed from the undivided Medinipur region, which was long considered one of the most politically influential belts of Bengal.
