Bhubaneswar: West Bengal got its first BJP chief minister as Governor RN Ravi administered the oath to Suvendu Adhikari at Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground today.
Adhikari became the ninth Chief Minister of West Bengal succeeding Mamata Banerjee, who had occupied the Chair for the last 15 years since 2011.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and several top Central BJP leaders, were present at the ceremony. Among others who arrived in Kolkata for the ceremony were Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister), Pushkar Singh Dhami (Uttarakhand), Conrad Sangma (Meghalaya), N Chandrababu Naidu (Andhra Pradesh), Bhupendra Patel (Gujarat) and Samrat Choudhary (Bihar).
Union Ministers Ram Mohan Naidu, Dharmendra Pradhan and Jayant Chaudhary also attended the ceremony.
Elected MLAs Dilip Ghosh, Agnimitra Paul, Ashok Kirtania, Kshudiram Tudu and Nishit Pramanik have also taken oath as ministers in Suvendu Adhikari’s cabinet.
Suvendu Adhikari had already made it clear that he will not operate like his predecessor Mamata Banerjee by dumping all his decisions on the members of his Cabinet and instead run the show on the basis of “collective leadership”.
“It will not be ‘I’ who will govern the state. It will be ‘we’ who will be governing the state. At the same time, the state will be governed through smooth Centre-state relationship and coordination,” Adhikari said.
It is pertinent to mention that Adhikari played a key role in Trinamool Congress’ Nandigram stir, which was among the key reasons attributed for the end of the 24-year Left Front regime in West Bengal and the beginning of the Trinamool Congress government. Differences surfaced in 2019 and he finally quit the TMC in 2021, later going on to lead the BJP’s charge against the government led by Banerjee, who once considered him a close aide.
