West Bengal / BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari elected as Leader of Opposition in WB

Kolkata: BJP leader and ex-TMC strongman Suvendu Adhikari was elected as the Leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly on Monday.

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced Suvendu Adhikari's name as the leader of the BJP legislature party in the assembly after a meeting of the legislators at the party's Hastings office in Kolkata.

Speaking on his appointment, Suvendu Adhikari said, "Overwhelmed to have been nominated by my Party as the Leader of Opposition in the Bidhan Sabha. I thank the BJP and Bengal BJP leadership for reposing their faith in me. Will hold the Govt accountable and defend the rights and interests of the great people of West Bengal."

With the state being rocked by post-poll violence and the BJP alleging that it faced the brunt of TMC's wrath, Suvendu Adhikari said, "I will work to fulfil the expectations of the people. I will help the government with positive efforts but also raise my voice against the violence going on in the state."

Suvendu Adhikari has earned a reputation as a 'giant slayer' by defeating Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the battle for Nandigram, even though his party lost heavily in the larger war to woo Bengal. After a seesaw fight till the last round, Adhikari won the seat by a narrow margin of just over 1,900 votes.

After the high-octane battle of Nandigram, the chief minister and Suvendu Adhikari will again be face-to-face in the assembly.

In December 2020, Suvendu Adhikari joined BJP, putting an end to months of speculation.

Trained in RSS shakhas during his formative years, Adhikari was baptised in student politics in the late 1980s as a member of Chatra Parishad, the Congress's student wing.

His first brush with electoral politics came in 1995 when he was elected as a councillor in Kanthi municipality, which his father headed from 1967 to 2009.

However, his first major assignment was as election agent to Nitish Sengupta, the Congress candidate from Kanthi Lok Sabha seat in 1996. Three years later, Adhikari along with his father switched over to the Trinamool Congress barely a year after it was formed. He tasted success in 2006 when he won the Kanthi assembly seat.

The Nandigram anti-farmland acquisition movement in 2007 changed Bengal's political landscape and catapulted him to the front row of the TMC.

Adhikari soon became a member of the TMC's core group and was appointed as president of the Trinamool Youth Congress. In 2009 and 2014, he won the Lok Sabha polls from Tamluk. After Banerjee stormed to power in the state in 2011, many saw Adhikari, who has a mass following in pockets of South Bengal, as her eventual heir apparent.

The seeds of mistrust between the two leaders were sown on the TMC's first annual Martyrs' Day rally after coming to power on July 21 in 2011, when Banerjee announced the entry of her nephew, Abhishek into politics.