Suvendu Adhikari takes oath: From a TMC poster boy to BJP’s first Bengal CM – a look at his political breakthrough

Suvendu Adhikari takes oath: Suvendu Adhikari was on 9 May sworn in as the first Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief minister of West Bengal. Suvendu’s elevation marks a watershed moment in West Bengal’s political landscape as BJP finally gets its government after the state saw decades of resistance to saffron politics.

Governor RN Ravi administered the oath of office and secrecy to Adhikari at a grand ceremony attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers, chief ministers of NDA-ruled states and senior BJP leaders.

The BJP chose Brigade Parade Grounds – once the citadel of massive Left rallies and later a key battleground of the TMC – for the swearing-in ceremony. Thousands of BJP supporters thronged the venue, waving saffron flags and raising the ‘Jay Shri Ram’ slogan as Adhikari, one of the principal architects of the BJP’s rise in Bengal, took oath amid elaborate security arrangements.

The BJP secured 207 seats in the 294-member assembly in the recently concluded elections, ending the Trinamool Congress‘ 15-year rule and scripting its most significant breakthrough in eastern India.

Who is Suvendu Adhikari?

Suvendu Adhikari was born in Karkuli village in Purba Medinipur district to veteran politician Sisir Adhikari and Gayatri Adhikari on 15 December,1970. He had his primary and secondary education at Contai High School, followed by an undergraduate degree in Arts from Prabhat Kumar College before earning a Master’s degree in History from Kolkata’s Rabindra Bharati University.

To begin with, Suvendu Adhikari was trained in the shakhas of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the idealogical fountianhead of the BJP. Suvendu joined politics in the late 1980s as a member of the Chatra Parishad, the Congress’ student wing. His first brush with electoral politics came in 1995 when he was elected as a councilor of Kanthi municipality, which his father, Sisir Adhikari, headed from 1967 to 2009.

In 1999, Suvendu Adhikari along with his father switched over to the Trinamool Congress barely a year after Mamata Banerjee-founded the party after parting ways from the Congress.

Suvendu’s organisational skills are said to have helped the TMC consolidate its base in Purba Medinipur and challenge the CPI(M)’s entrenched political machinery. In 2007, Suvendu emerged as Mamata Banerjee’s most trusted general during the Nandigram anti-land acquisition movement.

Suvendu soon became a member of the TMC’s core group and was appointed as president of its Youth Congress. In 2009 and 2014, he won the Lok Sabha polls from Tamluk.

Seeds of mistrust

The first seeds of mistrust between Suvendu and Mamata were sown on TMC’s first annual Martyr’s Day rally on 21 July 2011, when Banerjee announced the entry of her nephew, Abhishek into politics.

Abhishek, then just 24, was named the president of All India Trinamool Yuva, an organisation parallel to the TMC Youth Congress. The decision had Suvendu Adhikari fuming as the party constitution had no place for two youth wings.

In 2014, he was removed as the TMC Youth Congress president and a few months later, TMC Yuva was merged with its Youth Congress.

Mamata Banerjee, however, nominated him from Nandigram assembly seat in 2016 and inducted him to the state cabinet, giving him three portfolios. But, Abhishek’s meteoric rise in the party and in its decision-making fora continued to plague Suvendu Adhikari.

Suvendu, finally, switched to the BJP in December 2020 ahead of the 2021 Assembly polls, dramatically altering Bengal’s political landscape. He contested 2021 assembly election against Mamata Banerjee from Nandigram and defeated her. The BJP lost the 2021 election but emerged as a principal opposition party with 77 seats in assembly, a rise from 3 seats it had won in previous elections.

Once a TMC poster boy

In the last five years, Suvendu, once the poster boy of the Trinamool Congress, has evolved as into a formidable BJP face who delivered a far more emphatic blow by defeating chief minister Mamata Banerjee but ended up creating history by becoming BJP’s first Bengal CM since Independence.

From a trusted protege, Suvendu Adhikari reinvented himself as perhaps the most formidable challenger to Mamata Banerjee, the leader he once revered – ultimately bringing her down within the span of just five years.

In the process, he not only reshaped his own political destiny, but also won the confidence and close attention of the BJP’s top leadership, including Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Adhikari’s rise in Bengal’s political landscape is marked by his aggressive style and strong positions on issues such as law and order, illegal immigration, and governance against the TMC government, making him a central and polarising figure in the state, drawing support from his self-styled brand of Hindutva politics.

Triumph extends beyond symbolism

In the latest elections won with a landslide by the BJP, Suvendu won from Nandigram and Bhabanipur. Suvendu’s triumph extends beyond symbolism when he vanquished the TMC supremo in her own bastion of Bhabanipur by a formidable margin of 15,105 votes, underscoring a political shift that few could have predicted.

No wonder, with his twin accomplishments, and coupled with the fact that he engineered the Trinamool’s whitewash from his Purba Medinipur backyard ensuring the BJP won all 16 seats in the district, made him the foremost contender for the state’s top job – the chief minister.

Days before elections, Home Minister Amit Shah, credited by many as architech of Bengal victory, had announced that the CM would be someone from Bengal. Suvendu, met all those requirements for the top job for he is someone who is born and brought up in Bengal and has undergone schooling in Bengali medium.

Suvendu Adhikari net worth

Suvendu has 25 criminal cases filed against him. Most of these cases were registered since he defected from the TMC.

In the election affidavit filed before contesting the West Bengal Election 2026, Suvendu Adhikari has declared a net worth of ₹85.87 lakh. This includes ₹24.57 lakh in movable assets and ₹61.30 lakh in immovable assets, as per the affidavit.

In the movable assets, Adhikari has declared that he has cash in hand of ₹12,000 and doesn’t own a car or any other private vehicle. Adhikari has declared ‘nil’ in the jewellery column too.

Adhikari has bank deposits across 14 accounts, PNB, SBI, Axis Bank, IDBI Bank, and several cooperative banks in Contai and Nandigram. These deposits add up to ₹7.34 lakh.