Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari retains Bhabanipur Assembly seat, resigns from Nandigram
Telegraph | 13 May 2026
Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari announced on Wednesday that he will retain the Bhabanipur Assembly segment and give up Nandigram.
He won both the Bhabanipur and Nandigram seats in the recently-concluded assembly polls and took oath in the state Assembly as an MLA from Bhabanipur on Wednesday.
"Someone else will be elected as MLA from Nandigram (in a bypoll). But I will not let the people there feel my absence.
"I will fulfil all development promises I made to the people of Nandigram alongside the rest of the state,” Adhikari told reporters at the Assembly premises.
Referring to the 2009-2016 tenure of Phiroja Bibi as a TMC MLA from Nandigram when Adhikari was a frontline leader of Mamata Banerjee's party, he said, "I had provided all support to Phiroja Bibi, the mother of a martyr in the 2008 Nandigram police firing, although I wasn't officially the MLA from that seat. I will play a similar role this time as well."
Adhikari defeated Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes, puncturing what was long seen as her safest political refuge and delivering a decisive psychological blow to the TMC, amid a sweeping BJP surge across Bengal.
In a sweeping electoral mandate, the BJP has secured a decisive victory in the West Bengal Assembly elections, winning 207 seats- well past the two-thirds majority mark- and bringing an end to Mamata Banerjee-led TMC 15-year rule.
The majority mark in the 294-member House is 148. The result signals a decisive shift in the state’s political direction and ideological balance.
Responding to a question on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's austerity advice and call for curbing the use of petrol and diesel in the wake of the crisis triggered by the West Asia conflict, Adhikari said he issued instructions to cut down the number of vehicles in his cavalcade.
"The prime minister is our guide and mentor. We will follow the path shown by him. Swachh Bharat was one such nationalist call that came from the PM. It was an excellent decision to cut down on the number of convoy vehicles.
"I have already told the state DGP to convey the director (security) that all unnecessary vehicles must be removed from the CM's cavalcade and only those which are absolutely essential are to be retained," Adhikari said.