Suvendu Adhikari, leader of the Opposition in the outgoing Bengal Assembly, will contest the polls from Bhowanipore, the constituency and home turf of chief minister Mamata Banerjee in south Calcutta.
In the first list of 144 candidates released by the BJP in Delhi, Suvendu has also been fielded from his constituency Nandigram too. In the 2021 Assembly polls, Suvendu defeated Mamata by 1,956 votes. Following her defeat Mamata re-entered the Assembly after a by-poll in Bhowanipore.
"Suvendu is the undisputed face of the BJP in Bengal. In the last five years as the leader of Opposition his entire political focus has been against the chief minister and her policies. To drive home the message that the BJP is serious about defeating the Trinamool it was important for Suvendu to take the battle to her home turf," said a BJP source.
Once a close aide of the chief minister, Suvendu parted ways with Mamata and the Trinamool ahead of the 2021 Assembly polls and has since turned into one of the fiercest critics of the chief minister and her government.
Months before the polls Suvendu said he would contest from Bhowanipore and defeat Mamata again.
In her long political career, Mamata has lost only two elections, the 1989 Lok Sabha polls in Jadavpur and from Nandigram in 2021.
Since becoming the chief minister of Bengal in the summer of 2011, Mamata opted for Bhowanipore as her constituency. In the 2011 by-elections (Mamata did not contest the Assembly polls, instead campaigned for her nominees in the battle for Poriborton) she won by a margin of 54, 213 votes.
Five years later, she defeated the Congress nominee (supported by the Left) by a margin of 25, 301 votes.
The BJP had in 2016 received 26,299 votes. In 2021, when Mamata was busy in Nandigram, Trinamool retained Bhowanipore with a margin of 28,719. One favourable factor for the BJP was that it had increased its vote share to 35.16 per cent.
This time around the BJP is banking on the cosmopolitan character of the constituency with a large number of Marwaris, Gujaratis, Sikhs and Biharis.
After the final rolls were published on February 28, Bhowanipore has 1, 59, 201 voters, after 2,342 names were deleted and 18 new names added.
Mamata had claimed that the EC had deliberately deleted “genuine" voters.
Last December Suvendu had said: “I have defeated her once. If she goes to Metiabruz, it will be difficult to take on AIMIM or ISF. But if she contests from Bhowanipore, I will defeat her again.”
From the neighbouring constituency of Rasbehari, the BJP has fielded former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta. Actor Rudranil Ghosh has been nominated from Howrah’s Shibpur.
In the 2021 Assembly polls, the BJP had won 77 seats, some of whom later defected to the Trinamool.
Among the remaining 70-odd MLAs, around 40 have been re-nominated in the first list of candidates.
“The party had conducted surveys for all the 294 Assembly seats, and sought reports from the organisation on the incumbent and probable candidates. The leadership made its own assessment to on each of the individuals. Based on all these factors the candidate list has been prepared,” said a BJP source.
Among the prominent sitting MLAs to be re-nominated are Siliguri’s Shankar Ghosh, Asansol South’s Agnimitra Paul and Moyna’s Ashok Dinda, the former cricketer.
Former state BJP president Dilip Ghosh, who had been sulking since he lost to Trinamool’s Kirti Azad in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, will be the party nominee from Kharagpur Sadar, his old seat, where he had won in 2016.
The incumbent MLA Hiranmay Chatterjee, an actor in the local film industry has not been given the ticket this time.
Another prominent MLA missing from the list is economist Ashok Lahiri. The former chief economic adviser had won from the Balurghat seat in the last elections. The BJP has fielded Bidyut Roy from Balurghat in this election.
The BJP has dropped its sitting MLAs from Arambagh, Goghat, Balarampur, Raghunathpur, Haldia and Kotulpur.
