He was one of the principal architects of Mamata Banerjee’s rise to power.
On the morning of May 9, 2026, as Suvendu Adhikari raised his right hand at Brigade Parade Ground to take the oath of office as West Bengal’s ninth Chief Minister, the irony was inescapable. The man being sworn in had spent the better part of his career helping build the very political machine he just dismantled. He was one of the principal architects of Mamata Banerjee’s rise to power; now, he is the face of her political extinction.
Born into a political dynasty in Purba Medinipur, forged in the fires of a farmers’ uprising, and tempered by the bitterest of personal rivalries, the 55-year-old who took oath at Brigade Parade Ground today is one of the most improbable figures ever to occupy the Chief Minister’s chair in West Bengal.
Suvendu Adhikari was born on December 15, 1970, in Karkuli, a village in West Bengal’s Purba Medinipur district, to Sisir Adhikari and Gayatri Adhikari. Politics was the family trade. His father, Sisir Adhikari, served in both the West Bengal Legislative Assembly and the Lok Sabha, and his brother Dibyendu Adhikari was elected to the State Assembly and the Lok Sabha as a Trinamool Congress member before switching to the BJP in 2024.
Adhikari completed his higher education at Rabindra Bharati University. He is unmarried, a personal decision he has described as his own choice. He has said that he entered student politics in 1987 and has since dedicated his life to public service and politics. “I am unmarried, and the best part about celibacy is that I have a lot of time for work and no personal obligations,” Adhikari said in an interview.
He added that he drew inspiration from freedom fighters such as Satish Samanta, Sushil Dhara, and Ajoy Mukherjee, all of whom came from his Medinipur district, and remained unmarried while dedicating their lives to public service.
His political career began with the Indian National Congress in the municipal elections of 1995. Along with his father, he joined the newly formed Trinamool Congress in 1998, and in 2006 he was elected to the West Bengal Assembly from Kanthi Dakshin, a seat previously held by his father.
But the event that truly made Suvendu Adhikari was not an election. It was a massacre.
The Nandigram movement began in January 2007 after the Left Front Government proposed acquiring nearly 10,000 acres of land for a Special Economic Zone backed by Indonesia’s Salim Group. Local farmers and villagers feared losing their agricultural land and livelihoods, and resistance quickly grew into a mass agitation.
Adhikari spearheaded the anti-land-acquisition movement, leading the Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee. The movement turned violent on March 14, 2007, when police firing during protests left 14 people dead, triggering Statewide outrage and severely damaging the Left Front Government’s image.
While Mamata Banerjee led the higher-profile Singur agitation to drive out the Tata Nano factory, she entrusted Nandigram to her lieutenant. It was the developments at Nandigram, particularly after the police firing, that political analysts say created mass abhorrence of the Left across West Bengal – the true game-changer in the 2011 elections.
For Adhikari personally, the movement created a lasting political identity. Even after he left the TMC and joined the BJP in 2020, Nandigram remained central to his political narrative. He was credited with disrupting the grassroots dominance of the CPI(M) in several electorally significant districts, including Purba Medinipur, and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Tamluk in 2009, defeating his nearest rival by approximately 173,000 votes.
After the TMC’s historic victory in 2011, he resigned his Lok Sabha seat in 2016, won the Nandigram Assembly seat, and was inducted into Banerjee’s Cabinet as Transport and Irrigation Minister.
His break with Mamata Banerjee, when it came, was savage in its completeness. Internal political differences within the TMC, particularly regarding the growing influence of Abhishek Banerjee – the Chief Minister’s nephew – led to mounting dissatisfaction, and in December 2020, Adhikari resigned from the TMC, citing ideological differences and concerns over dynastic politics.
He formally joined the BJP in the presence of Amit Shah – a move considered the biggest political coup in Bengal in years. His departure triggered a wave of defections from the TMC, significantly altering the State’s political landscape.
His political rebirth was sealed in 2021. Adhikari chose to contest from Nandigram against Mamata Banerjee herself – a direct, personal duel that gripped the State. He created a major political upset by defeating Banerjee in Nandigram with a margin of 1,956 votes. The BJP nevertheless lost the 2021 election badly, winning only 77 seats to the TMC’s 213. Adhikari became Leader of the Opposition and spent the next five years using that platform to relentlessly batter the Banerjee Government over the school recruitment scam, the Sandeshkhali atrocities, and the RG Kar rape and murder case.
In 2026, he contested from two constituencies simultaneously – Nandigram and Bhabanipur, the seat Mamata had made her political fortress. He defeated Banerjee in Bhabanipur by more than 15,000 votes. The last time an incumbent Chief Minister was defeated on their own seat by a candidate contesting from two seats was in 1967.
The shadows on this remarkable career are real. Adhikari came under CBI investigation in connection with the Saradha Group’s Ponzi scheme collapse in 2013, which defrauded investors of an estimated Rs 25,000 crore, though he was not directly named in any specific chargesheet. The 2014 Narada sting operation filmed several TMC leaders, including Adhikari, accepting cash bribes; he denied the allegations and questioned the authenticity of the footage, and the case remains under investigation.
Regarded now as a political heavyweight and the BJP’s most prominent face in the State, Adhikari brings to office a biography shaped almost entirely by conflict – against the Left, against the TMC, and against Mamata Banerjee, the woman who once trusted him completely.
Whether the skills that made him Bengal’s most dangerous Opposition leader translate into statecraft will be the defining question of the years ahead.
