CM-elect Adhikari stakes claim to form Bengal's first BJP govt

West Bengal chief minister-elect Suvendu Adhikari on Friday evening met Governor RN Ravi and staked a claim to form the first BJP-led government in the state. Adhikari would take oath as the ninth chief minister of Bengal and the first in 55 years to helm the states administration with origins in the districts.

West Bengal chief minister-elect Suvendu Adhikari on Friday evening met Governor RN Ravi and staked a claim to form the first BJP-led government in the state. Adhikari reached Lok Bhavan barely two hours after being elected leader of the BJP legislature party at a meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The CM-elect was accompanied by several top leaders of the BJP, including Union ministers Bhupendra Yadav, Sukanta Majumdar and Santanu Thakur, Odisha Chief Minister and co-observer of the BJP legislature party meeting, Mohan Charan Majhi, BJP Bengal chief Samik Bhattacharya, other senior leaders of the party's state unit like Dilip Ghosh, Locket Chatterjee, and Tapas Roy. In the recently concluded state polls, the BJP romped home with 207 seats in the 294-member Assembly, reducing the TMC to just 80. Adhikari and his council of ministers are scheduled to be sworn in at a grand ceremony at the Brigade Parade Grounds on Saturday in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, top Union ministers and some 20 chief ministers of BJP-ruled states. Adhikari would take oath as the ninth chief minister of Bengal and the first in 55 years to helm the state's administration with origins in the districts. The last time Bengal had a chief minister from its rural backyards and not from its capital in Kolkata was in 1971 when Ajoy Mukherjee, representing the Indian National Congress (Requisitionists), a breakaway faction led by Indira Gandhi after the Congress split in 1969, took charge for his third stint as the state's CM. Mukherjee hailed from undivided Medinipur, the region Adhikari also owes its roots to.