Suvendu Adhikari | The Bengal pivot

Weeks before Suvendu Adhikari defected from the Trinamool Congress to join the BJP in December 2020, several senior Trinamool leaders tried to persuade him to stay. But Mr. Adhikari’s close aides knew that he had made up his mind: he wanted to become the Chief Minister of West Bengal — an ambition he could never realise had he remained with the Trinamool.

Mr. Adhikari was the most promising of the second generation of Trinamool leaders until Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee emerged on the political scene. At the age of 27, Abhishek was elected MP from the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha seat in 2014. By then, Mr. Adhikari had emerged as a prominent Trinamool leader who challenged the organisational might of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) during the Nandigram protests.

Mr. Adhikari comes from a political family in West Bengal’s coastal Purba Medinipur district. His father Sishir Adhikari was associated with the Congress and then with the Trinamool when the party was set up in 1998.

It was the fight against land acquisition at Singur and Nandigram that catapulted Ms. Banerjee and the Trinamool to power in 2011, ending 34 years of Left Front rule in West Bengal. Mr. Adhikari was at the forefront of these protests. From the victims of Nandigram shooting in 2007 to those killed in communal violence in Murshidabad in 2025, many families of victims say that Mr. Adhikari stood by them when few others did.

Growing influence

After the Trinamool came to power in 2011, Mr. Adhikari started extending his political influence across south and central Bengal, bringing MLAs, civic bodies and strongholds of the CPI(M)-led Left Front and the Congress into the Trinamool’s fold. In 2016, he joined the Cabinet headed by Ms. Banerjee and became one of the most influential Ministers, in charge of the Transport and Environment Department.

The most challenging part of Mr. Adhikari’s political journey came after he left the Trinamool. After defeating Ms. Banerjee in Nandigram in the 2021 Assembly polls by a margin of 1,956 votes, he faced a barrage of criminal cases by the West Bengal Police.

The State police filed so many cases against him that the Calcutta High Court, in an unprecedented order, directed that no new FIRs be filed against Mr. Adhikari and stayed proceedings in all pending cases. The affidavit filed by the BJP leader before the Election Commission in 2026 referred to 29 cases.

By his own admission, the BJP leader had to approach the Calcutta High Court on 111 occasions after the police denied him permission to hold public meetings. In campaign rallies, he repeatedly said West Bengal would go the way of Bangladesh if the Trinamool were to be voted to power again in 2026.

Mr. Adhikari has not been a stranger to controversies. His name figured in the Narada sting videos in which several Trinamool leaders were seen accepting cash on camera before the 2016 Assembly polls. More recently, after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, he triggered another controversy when he said there was no need for the BJP Minority Morcha as Muslims did not vote for the BJP. If Ms. Banerjee was a student of the Left Front’s brand of politics, Mr. Adhikari is a student of Ms. Banerjee’s — populist, relentless, unforgiving, and unafraid to deploy the administrative apparatus against political adversaries. Once her closest aide, he went on to become her fiercest rival.

By defeating Ms. Banerjee in her Bhabanipur bastion by 15,115 votes in the 2026 Assembly election, Mr. Adhikari cemented his claim to the Chief Minister’s post in West Bengal.

At 57, Mr. Adhikari will take charge of West Bengal at one of its most challenging moments — when the State is in urgent need of industry and jobs, its social fabric deeply polarised, and concerns over law and order persist. One of West Bengal’s most popular leaders, Mr. Adhikari brings decades of electoral experience and some administrative experience. But he will need considerable political skill and far-sightedness to put the State back on track.