West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | Suvendu emerges as frontrunner for CM pick but BJP circles abuzz with more contenders

Kolkata: Though Suvendu Adhikari has emerged as the frontrunner to head the BJP government in West Bengal, the saffron circles have also been abuzz with speculation about other contenders, including the state party chief Samik Bhattacharya, the party’s former national vice president Dilip Ghosh, and the columnist-cum-politician Swapan Dasgupta.

The speculation is also rife that the BJP top brass might also place Anandamay Barman, who was a member of the outgoing assembly and was re-elected from his Matigara-Naxalbari constituency in North Bengal, for the top job. The BJP secured 40 of 54 assembly seats in North Bengal in the just-concluded elections, surpassing its previous record of 30 seats in the 2021 polls. The party might send out a message to the Rajbanshis, a Hindu Dalit community that Anandamay Barman hails from, but also to the North Bengal region, which emerged as the saffron stronghold.

Suvendu, who was the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, emerged as the most prominent face of the BJP in the past five years since defecting from the Trinamool Congress. As Union Home Minister Amit Shah, himself, had flown in from New Delhi to join him in a roadshow before he had gone to file his nomination as the BJP candidate against the TMC supremo and chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, in Bhabanipur in Kolkata, he was seen as the BJP’s de facto chief ministerial candidate during the rest of the campaigning.

He held on to his home constituency, Nandigram in Purba Medinipur, where he had defeated TMC supremo and chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, in 2021. He also beat Mamata in Bhabanipur.

With Hindutva up on his sleeves since December 2020, Suvendu has been the most vocal critic of Mamata, particularly on the issue of alleged appeasement of Muslims by the TMC government.

Though Suvendu emerged as the frontrunner to succeed Mamata, the fact that he was brought in from the TMC might come in his way to the top job, given his not-so-warm relations with the old guards like Dilip Ghosh, who won from Kharagpur Sadar.

Ghosh had led the BJP as its West Bengal unit chief during the 2021 state assembly polls, which had established the saffron party as the principal challenger to the TMC. The BJP’s tally had gone up from just three seats in the 294-member assembly in 2016 to 77 in 2021. But as the stature of Adhikari rose within the party, Ghosh was somewhat sidelined and often not-so-subtly gave vent to his ire against the leaders who came to the saffron party from the TMC. The relations between Ghosh and Adhikari had worsened when the veteran leader had been asked to contest from the state’s Bardhaman-Durgapur Lok Sabha constituency in the 2024 parliamentary elections, instead of Medinipur, where he had won in 2019. Adhikari, according to the party insiders, had played a key role in changing the constituency of Ghosh, who had ultimately lost to Kirti Azad of Trinamool Congress. Ghosh had defied the party’s call for boycotting the inauguration of Lord Jagannath’s temple in Digha by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. He had not only attended the event on April 30, 2025, but also had a courtesy meeting with the TMC supremo.

A long-time BJP leader with roots in the RSS, Samik Bhattacharya has steadily risen through the party ranks in West Bengal. Known for his ideological clarity and acceptability across factions, he has played a key role in strengthening the party’s structure in urban and semi-urban regions. He is not regarded as a mass mobiliser like Adhikari, though.

Dasgupta, a former Rajya Sabha MP, is also being seen as a contender. An intellectual and political commentator before entering active politics, Dasgupta has been associated with the BJP’s ideological ecosystem for years and won from Rashbehari in Kolkata. He has served in Parliament and contributed to shaping the party’s narrative at the national level.

The BJP's selection of ‘unlikely’ chief ministers – such as Mohan Charan Majhi in Odisha and Mohan Yadav in Madhya Pradesh – reflects a move to bypass established regional leaders and cultivate a second line of leadership. The party also elevated grassroots workers, like Bhajan Lal Sharma in Rajasthan or Vishnu Deo Sai in Chhattisgarh, to the helm of the state government.