The BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya is most likely to lead the party’s Bengal unit into the next year’s Assembly polls.
Wednesday evening at the end of the deadline for filing nominations, Bhattacharya’s was the only name in the reckoning.
This morning, when Bhattacharya went to file his nomination for the party president’s post, the incumbent Sukanta Mazumdar and leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari had accompanied him.
A statement released by the BJP on Wednesday evening said Member of Parliament and former union minister RS Prasad will announce the name of the new president on Thursday in an event at the Science City auditorium.
If Bhattacharya is elevated, Mazumdar will be counted among those party chiefs who did not face any Assembly elections. Mazumdar replaced the former state unit chief Dilip Ghosh after the 2021 Assembly polls debacle where the BJP failed to come anywhere close to the majority mark, despite the tall claims.
Under Mazumdar, the BJP in last year’s Lok Sabha polls did poorly winning only 12 seats, and importantly some of the sitting MPs lost.
A section of the BJP was in favour of retaining Mazumdar at least till the 2026 Assembly elections. However, being a junior Union minister and the lack of results under his leadership came in Mazumdar's way. Another section wanted Adhikari, but old-timers in the party are wary of him though they have little choice as he is the only popular leader the party has right now.
Bhattacharya will be the middle of the road choice.
The new party state unit chief will have little time to set the house in order if the BJP has to seriously challenge the ruling Trinamool, its most formidable political rival across India. On paper, the BJP with 65 MLAs remains the only opposition to the Trinamool.
Since the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Bengal BJP has steadily conceded ground to the Trinamool. In successive bypolls, BJP not only lost all the 11 held so far, but also failed to secure the lead that it had in the Lok Sabha polls in the four Assembly seats of Raiganj, Madarihat, Ranaghat South and Bagdah. In the last bypoll held for the Kaliganj Assembly seat, the BJP’s vote share went down to 28.29 per cent from the 30.91 per cent it had secured in the 2021 Assembly polls.
Bhattacharya’s advantage is his equation with the leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly and the BJP’s face in the state, Suvendu Adhikari.
A swayamsevak since 1971, Bhattacharya, born in 1963, is one of the most-well known speakers in the BJP and has been the chief spokesperson, attacking the Trinamool in party news conferences and on television channels.
The BJP’s attempts to polarise the voters on religious lines has so far backfired; it has helped the Trinamool consolidate Muslim votes.
For the new president the path that the BJP needs to chart to attract voters to its fold will be the priority.
Former state BJP president and former governor of Tripura and Meghalaya Tathagata Roy has already spoken in favour of Bhattacharya.
“Congratulations to Samik Bhattacharya upon being elected president of West Bengal BJP. An excellent speaker in Bengali, a razor-sharp intellect and a hold on both organization and public relations,” wrote Roy on his X handle. “But didn’t I bat for Suvendu Adhikari for president? Of course I did, what of it?”