The remarkable rise of Suvendu Adhikari
Once the poster boy of the Trinamool Congress and a frontline face of Mamata Banerjee’s anti-land acquisition movement in Nandigram, Suvendu Adhikari’s evolution into a formidable BJP rival poised to wrest the State’s administrative helm is as dramatic as it is remarkable.
Adhikari not only reprised his victory over Banerjee in Nandigram – achieved five years ago – but eclipsed it in the 2026 polls, delivering a far more emphatic blow.
His triumph extended beyond symbolism when he vanquished the TMC supremo in her own bastion of Bhabanipur by a formidable margin of 15,105 votes, underscoring a political shift that few could have predicted.
That he also retained Nandigram with a comfortable margin of 9,665 votes — a significant leap from his earlier margin of just 1,956 — now reads almost like a footnote in the larger story of his sweeping success in Bhabanipur.
No wonder, with his twin accomplishments, and coupled with the fact that he engineered the Trinamool’s whitewash from his Purba Medinipur backyard ensuring the BJP won all 16 seats in the district, makes him foremost contender for the state’s top job, its next chief minister.
The BJP though, while announcing that the party’s CM designate would be someone who is born and brought up in Bengal and has undergone schooling in Bengali medium, is yet to officially name Adhikari, or for that matter anyone else, for the post. Adhikari, interestingly meets all the requirements for the top job named by Union Home Minister Amit Shah during his poll campaigns.
From a trusted protege, Adhikari reinvented himself as perhaps the most formidable challenger to the very leader he once revered – ultimately bringing her down within the span of just five years.
In the process, he not only reshaped his own political destiny, but also won the confidence and close attention of the BJP’s top leadership, including Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Adhikari’s rise in Bengal’s political landscape is marked by his aggressive style and strong positions on issues such as law and order, illegal immigration, and governance against the TMC government, making him a central and polarising figure in the state, drawing support from his self-styled brand of Hindutva politics.
The BJP leader spent much of his early political career building influence in the state’s coastal and industrial regions of the chiefly agrarian Purba Medinipur district before breaking away from the party in 2020.
His switch to the BJP marked a major turning point in Bengal politics, and he quickly emerged as one of the party’s most prominent leaders in the state.
Adhikari’s biggest political gambit was to take on Mamata Banerjee in the high-profile 2021 Nandigram assembly election, where his victory made him gain state-wide prominence.
That win cemented not only the domination of the Adhikari family that nursed the region for decades, but also catapulted its eldest son to the position of the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly.
To tailor himself to his party’s beliefs and for a future role in its hierarchy, Adhikari has worked to change his image from an inclusive leader of the land acquisition movement to being a mascot of the Hindutva brigade, claiming that if TMC wins it could “turn West Bengal into East Bangladesh”.
Trained in RSS shakhas during his formative years, Adhikari was baptised in politics in the late 1980s as a member of the Chatra Parishad, the Congress’ student wing.
His first brush with electoral politics came in 1995 when he was elected as a councilor of Kanthi municipality, which his father, Sisir Adhikari, headed from 1967 to 2009.
In 1999, Adhikari along with his father switched over to the Trinamool Congress barely a year after it was formed.
Thereafter, he unsuccessfully contested elections twice - in the 2001 assembly polls and the 2004 Lok Sabha polls. He ultimately tasted success in 2006 when he won the Contai assembly seat.
The Nandigram anti-farmland acquisition movement in 2007, which changed Bengal’s political landscape, 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 its 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 boasted a mass following in pockets of South Bengal, as her eventual heir apparent.
The seeds of mistrust between the two leaders were, however, sown on TMC’s first annual Martyr’s Day rally on July 21 that year, when Banerjee announced the entry of her nephew, Abhishek into politics.
Abhishek, then just 24, was named the president of All India Trinamool Yuva, an organisation parallel to the TMC Youth Congress. The decision had Adhikari fuming as the party constitution had no place for two youth wings.
“It was done just to keep me in check. Despite working hard, I was always an employee in TMC and never respected as a fellow warrior. Where was the nephew when Nandigram was burning? I was there fighting alone,” he later said, terming the TMC a “private limited company”.
In 2014, he was removed as the TMC Youth Congress president and a few months later, TMC Yuva was merged with its Youth Congress.
Sensing that Adhikari might change sides as he was in talks with the Congress, Banerjee nominated him from Nandigram assembly seat in 2016 seat and inducted him to the state cabinet, giving him three portfolios.
Adhikari was also made the TMC observer in Malda and Murshidabad and assigned the task of breaking the Congress in its two strongholds. He successfully poached elected representatives of the grand old party.
But, Abhishek’s meteoric rise in the party and in its decision-making fora continued to plague Adhikari. After its 2019 Lok Sabha poll setback, TMC abolished the observer’s post, which many feel was done to clip his wings, marking the tipping point for his jumping ship to the BJP.
As for the 25 criminal cases Adhikari now faces, which were mostly filed since he defected from the TMC, hazarding a guess on what would eventually become of them wouldn’t invite any prizes.
