West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | From ‘Jo Hamare Sath’ back to ‘Sabka Saath’: Suvendu chosen as new CM

Suvendu, 55, is set to take the oath as the new chief minister of West Bengal in a ceremony at Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata on Saturday

Kolkata:: Two years after calling for a shift to “Jo Hamare Sath, Hum Unke Sath”, Suvendu Adhikari returned to invoking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas…” mantra, as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s newly elected legislators in West Bengal elected him as their leader on Friday, setting the stage for him to lead the state’s new government.

Suvendu is set to take the oath as the new chief minister of West Bengal in a ceremony at Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata on Saturday. He will succeed the Trinamool Congress supremo and his former mentor, Mamata Banerjee, whom he defeated in her home constituency, Bhabanipur in Kolkata, in the just-concluded assembly elections.

He was unanimously elected as the leader of the BJP’s legislative party after his name was put forward for the leadership by the party’s former state unit chief, Dilip Ghosh, who had also been perceived as a contender for the office of the chief minister. Ghosh, one of the old guards of the BJP in West Bengal, had frosty relations with Suvendu, who had defected from the TMC to the saffron party in December 2020, but the party high command made them agree to a truce just before the assembly elections.

The election of the BJP legislative party leader was overseen by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who said that all eight proposals received were in favour of Suvendu.

“Narendra Modiji’s mantra ‘Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Viswas, Sabka Prayas (Together with All, Development for All, Trust of All, Efforts by All)’ should show us the path,” Suvendu told the newly elected BJP legislators after being elected as their leader. “We will implement all the promises we made in our poll manifesto in a time-bound manner.”

He later visited the Lok Bhavan along with Ghosh, state BJP chief Samik Bhattacharya, as well as other leaders of the saffron party, and staked the claim to form the next government.

Modi, Shah and the chief ministers of several BJP-ruled states will attend the swearing-in ceremony on Saturday, the day the 165th birth anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore will be celebrated in West Bengal.

In July 2024, shortly after the BJP suffered a setback in West Bengal in the parliamentary elections, Suvendu, then Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, had questioned the utility of the ‘Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas’ slogan in a meeting of the party leaders in Kolkata and suggested switching to “Jo Hamare Sath, Hum Unke Sath (We are with those who are with us)”. His comment had created a flutter, although he had later said that he had only suggested what should be the BJP’s strategy in West Bengal.

Since narrowly defeating Mamata in Nandigram in the 2021 elections, Suvendu has been wearing Hindutva on his sleeve and stated after the polls that he had not received votes from the Muslims and would work as the legislator of only the Hindus, who had supported him. Even after winning in Bhabanipur in addition to Nandigram in the just-concluded parliamentary elections, he told journalists that the Hindus, Sikhs and Jains of the constituency had voted for him and only the Muslims voted for Mamata.

“Bhoi (fear) is out and, as Narendra Modi ji has said, bharosa (trust) is in,” he said, adding: “A commission headed by a retired judge will investigate all corruption cases. The commissions will also probe into incidents of atrocities against women, and the guilty will be punished.”

He vowed to end illegal migration from across India’s border with Bangladesh and drive out the infiltrators from West Bengal.

The BJP government, he added, would work for rebuilding West Bengal and win the support of “over 60% people” before the next elections through “positive governance”.

The saffron party secured 45.84% votes and won 207 seats so far in the 294-member assembly in the recent elections. The Election Commission decided to hold repolling in a constituency – Falta in South 24 Parganas – on May 21. The TMC got 40.80% votes and could win only 80 seats.

“This mandate is not about enlarging our organisation or proving an ideology, but about sealing the biggest breach in the nation’s security. Infiltration and cattle smuggling in West Bengal will now be ended,” Shah said in Kolkata on Friday. He alleged that Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year tenure had witnessed the “politicisation of governance and the criminalisation of politics” in the state. “Under a BJP government, neither the administration will be politicised, nor will politics be allowed to turn criminal,” added the Union Home Minister.

Suvendu is going to be the second chief minister from Purba Medinipur after Ajay Mukherjee, who had led the state government from March to November in 1967.

“Not I or me, but we and us will be the core principle of the BJP government,” said the 55-year-old, who quoted Swami Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore in his speech on Friday.

Suvendu was a municipal councillor in Contai in the 1990s. He lost his first assembly election in 2001 but won in 2006.

He helped Mamata organise a movement against the proposed acquisition of farmland by the then Left Front government for a chemical hub in 2006-2007. The movement set the stage for the TMC’s ascent to power in the state in 2011.

Meanwhile, in 2009, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Tamluk, defeating Lakshman Seth of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He retained the seat in 2014. In 2016, he returned to state politics, winning Nandigram and becoming a minister in the government led by Mamata.

But the growing role of Mamata’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee within the TMC eventually led to the exit of Suvendu, along with many other disgruntled leaders, from the party ahead of the 2021 assembly elections. He emerged as the most prominent face of the BJP in West Bengal over the past five years.

Suvendu’s father, Sisir Adhikari, served as a legislator and a parliamentarian of the TMC, as well as a Union Minister of State. A few months after Suvendu, Sisir too quit the TMC and joined the BJP in 2021, along with his other sons, Dibyendu and Soumendu, who, too, have been members of the state assembly and the Lok Sabha.