Who will BJP pick as Bengal CM? Suvendu Adhikari, Samik Bhattacharya, Agnimitra Paul among frontrunners

Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of opposition in the West Bengal assembly, who defeated chief minister Mamata Banerjee in her home constituency Bhabanipur on Monday, has emerged as the front-runner for the chief ministerial post after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the assembly polls in the eastern state, party functionaries said.

The BJP won the West Bengal assembly polls for the first time on Monday, winning 206 of the state's 293 seats for which counting took place. Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) won (or was leading from) 81 seats.

BJP leaders, however, said the party has not ruled out the names of state unit chief Samik Bhattacharya and vice-president Agnimitra Paul as other probable CM faces. Paul won from Asansol Dakshin on Monday.

Adhikari, according to a senior BJP functionary, could be rewarded for defeating Mamata Banerjee not once, but twice — this time by a margin of 15,105 votes in Bhabanipur. He had also defeated Banerjee from Nandigram in the 2021 polls, by 1,956 votes. "He has been unrelenting against Mamata since he left the TMC in 2020," said a senior Bengal BJP leader, requesting anonymity. In return, the leader added, the TMC government had slapped around 300 cases against Adhikari.

On 2 April, when Adhikari filed his nomination papers from Kolkata's Bhabanipur seat, Union home minister Amit Shah accompanied him, indicating the party's top brass was behind him. Shah had then said, "Mamata won the last election, but she was defeated by Suvendu Adhikari. This year, Mamata will lose all over Bengal as well as in Bhabanipur."

Another senior BJP leader pointed out that unlike the Lok Sabha polls, the party never fielded any candidate from two assembly seats in recent history. "For Adhikari, this was a test of his charisma and capability as leader of the opposition," the leader said, also declining to be named.

In Bhabanipur, Adhikari received 73,917 votes as against 58,812 for Mamata Banerjee. Adhikari also won the Nandigram seat against TMC's Pabitra Kar by a margin of 9,665 votes. "This is a historic victory… a victory of Hindutva, a victory of Bengal, a victory of Modiji," Adhikari told reporters, holding his winning certificate outside the Sakhawat Memorial School counting centre in Kolkata.

BJP functionaries said that Agnimitra Paul is also in the race and could become an ideal candidate for the top post should the party decide to back a woman CM. Paul was a Lok Sabha MP from 2019 to 2024. Samik Bhattacharya, the functionaries pointed out, could be considered, as under his leadership the party won the first assembly polls in Bengal. Bhattacharya is currently a member of the Rajya Sabha.

The BJP is likely to call a meeting of all newly elected legislators in Kolkata in the next few days. However, party leaders said there was no clarity on when the party will call a legislative party meeting to elect its leader, who would be the chief minister.

"We are expecting the party to name an observer for holding the legislative party meeting in the next few days. Once that is done, the ball will start rolling to form the BJP government in the state," a third BJP leader said.

Adhikari, who held several portfolios in the Mamata Banerjee-led cabinet, switched from the TMC to the BJP in December 2020. Shah had welcomed him to the party at a rally.

BJP leaders said Adhikari had conducted a high-profile campaign across the state in the past two months. A BJP leader said Adhikari shaped the party campaign in 2025 by publicly declaring that the BJP should focus on Bengal's 70.54% Hindu voters and ignore the around 27% Muslims.

Muslim voters play a decisive role in at least 120 of Bengal's 294 assembly seats. The BJP won only 77 of these in 2021. The party fielded nine Muslim candidates but none won.

"In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, we secured 38% of the vote. These are all Hindu votes. If 10% more Hindus vote for us, we will oust Mamata Banerjee next year," he said at a rally in East Midnapore in January last year.

On Monday, the BJP secured a comfortable victory in many seats with a high Muslim population, such as Malda, Murshidabad, Howrah, Kolkata and Birbhum.