Kolkata | The oath-taking ceremony of the first BJP government in West Bengal will be held at Brigade Parade Ground here on May 9, marking the saffron camp’s arrival in power in a state after decades on the political fringes.
The ceremony, scheduled to begin at 10 am, is expected to witness the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president Nitin Nabin, several Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP- and NDA-ruled states, party sources said.
“The new BJP government will take oath on May 9 at 10 am at Brigade Parade Ground,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya announced on Wednesday.
Even as the BJP leadership kept its cards close to the chest on the chief ministerial face, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari has emerged as a frontrunner in internal discussions after cementing his position as the party’s principal mass leader in Bengal politics.
Adhikari, once among Mamata Banerjee’s closest lieutenants and a key architect of the TMC’s rural expansion in districts such as Purba Medinipur, crossed over to the BJP ahead of the 2021 assembly elections and went on to defeat Banerjee in Nandigram in one of Bengal’s fiercest political battles.
Five years later, he again found himself at the centre of Bengal’s political churn by beating Banerjee in her own turf at Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes.
Other names for the CM post doing the rounds include Bhattacharya, Union minister Sukanta Majumdar and former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, though party insiders indicated that the leadership was inclined towards projecting a “bhumiputra” face rooted in Bengal’s linguistic and cultural ethos.
During the campaign, Shah repeatedly asserted that the BJP’s chief minister in Bengal would be a “son of the soil”, born and educated in the state, in an attempt to blunt the TMC’s sustained attack that the BJP represented an “outsider” political culture alien to Bengal’s social and intellectual traditions.
The BJP bagged 207 of the 294 assembly seats in the recently concluded elections, ending the Trinamool Congress’s uninterrupted 15-year rule and scripting the saffron party’s biggest breakthrough in a state where it once struggled to open its electoral account.
Significantly, the swearing-in ceremony will be held on the 25th day of Baisakh in the Bengali calendar — observed across the state as Rabindra Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore — lending the event a deeper cultural symbolism.
According to BJP leaders, the choice of the date is aimed at embedding the party’s historic rise within Bengal’s cultural imagination and countering the long-standing perception battle over identity and belonging.
Over the last decade, the BJP has steadily attempted to appropriate and reinterpret icons of Bengal’s cultural nationalism — from Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee — as part of a broader ideological effort to expand its emotional and political footprint in the state.
Party insiders said the leadership was also conscious of the need to balance Bengal’s competing regional aspirations while choosing the chief ministerial face, with discussions also taking place around whether greater representation should be accorded to north Bengal, a region where the BJP has made substantial electoral gains over successive elections.
A meeting of the newly elected BJP MLAs has been convened on May 8 evening, party sources said, though the leadership remained tight-lipped over the final choice.
The Brigade Parade Ground ceremony is expected to mark not merely a transfer of power, but a defining moment in Bengal’s political history, the culmination of the BJP’s long ideological and organisational march from the margins to the centre of power in a state that had for decades resisted the saffron surge seen elsewhere in India.
Mumbai | The Opposition on Wednesday supported West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s refusal to quit, with Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut calling it a part of her protest against the Centre and the Election Commission of India.
Maharashtra minister and senior BJP leader Mangal Prabhat Lodha said her decision not to resign even after defeat in the assembly polls would amount to disregarding constitutional norms. The “nationalist” people of Bengal have taught her a strong lesson, he said.
Speaking to reporters earlier in the day, Raut asserted that it was necessary to unite against the “dictatorship of the Centre and partisan behaviour of the Election Commission”. The poll body has become a “slave” of the Centre, the Rajya Sabha member charged.
The Opposition has to decide whether it has to contest the polls or not, he said.
“Mamata Banerjee not resigning is part of her agitation against the government (Centre), the Election Commission (EC) and a series of acts against democracy,” Raut said.
It has to be seen what direction the agitation takes, he added.
Alleging that the West Bengal assembly poll verdict was “not a people's mandate but a conspiracy”, Banerjee on Tuesday refused to resign as chief minister.
The BJP on Monday sealed a landslide victory with 207 seats in the 294-member assembly, ending the TMC’s uninterrupted 15-year rule. Banerjee dismissed the outcome as “engineered” and asserted that her party was fighting the Election Commission, not the BJP. The TMC could only manage 80 seats.
In a post on Facebook, Raut said Banerjee’s decision not to quit is fully justified. He also sought to draw a parallel with the 2022 Maharashtra political crisis.
The then Chief Justice of India had observed during hearings on petitions seeking the disqualification of rebel MLAs of the undivided Shiv Sena that Uddhav Thackeray, who headed the party at the time, could have been reinstated as chief minister had he not resigned, Raut said.
The parliamentarian said Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray called up Banerjee after the recently concluded polls and extended support. Almost all the INDIA bloc leaders have called Banerjee and extended their support to her.
“We have to come together if we have to unite against the dictatorship of the Centre and the partisan behaviour of the EC or the way the poll body has become slaves of the government,” Raut said.
He claimed that even many in the government do not agree with the “degradation of democracy”.
NCP (SP) spokesperson Mahesh Tapase claimed that democratic processes were undermined in Bengal, and central agencies and administrative machinery were used to influence the poll outcome.
Speaking to the media, he stressed the need for a detailed analysis.
Institutions such as the EC and agencies like the CBI, Income Tax Department, Enforcement Directorate and CRPF (Central Reserve Protection Force) were used in a manner that put pressure on the electoral process, the leader from Sharad Pawar’s party alleged.
Similar circumstances had prevailed in Maharashtra earlier and were now being witnessed in Bengal, he said.
Tapase claimed voters were prevented from exercising their franchise freely due to the presence and actions of central forces and agencies, raising concerns over the fairness of the election.
Maharashtra minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha hit back at the Opposition for questioning the electoral process.
The West Bengal poll results showed that “those who speak for Hindu interests will rule the nation”, he said.
Lodha said the “nationalist people of Bengal have taught Mamata Didi a strong lesson” and alleged that her refusal to resign after defeat would amount to disregarding constitutional norms.
He said Bengal had endured “immense suffering” during the tenure of Mamata Banerjee, accusing her of remaining silent on alleged atrocities against Hindus and treating infiltration as a “vote bank issue”.
“Despite holding a constitutional position, she witnessed these incidents without action,” he said, claiming that anger among voters led to the regime being “overthrown through the ballot”.
He said the elections were fought under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on issues of development and nationalism, and that the mandate reflected strong faith in the BJP.
Lodha also said that “atrocities against Hindus will not be tolerated in the country” and asserted that nationalism and the protection of Hindu interests must be upheld. “Through these results, the nationalist citizens of West Bengal have conveyed this message across the nation,” he added.
