Kolkata: With Home Minister Amit Shah himself likely to accompany him when he will file his nomination as a candidate for Bhabanipur in Kolkata on Thursday, the Bharatiya Janata Party is set to send out a clear signal that its West Bengal heavyweight, Suvendu Adhikari, is going to be its chief ministerial face in the state.
Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition in the outgoing legislative assembly of West Bengal, already filed his nomination as a candidate in Nandigram in the Purba Medinipur district of the state on Monday. He is likely to do the same for Bhabanipur, his second constituency, on Thursday.
With the state's chief minister and the ruling Trinamool Congress supremo, Mamata Banerjee, herself, his principal rival in Bhabanipur, the BJP has planned a high-octane road show to mark the occasion. Shah, himself, will fly in to take part in the rally.
"I have just received a phone call that Amit Shah Ji will come to give his blessing when I will submit my nomination papers for Bhabanipur on April 2," Adhikari, himself, told journalists on Tuesday.
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To avoid discontent among the old leaders of the party in the state, the BJP high command, however, so far refrained from formally declaring him as its pick for the top job should it succeed in dislodging the TMC from power.
But by fielding him from both Nandigram, where he beat Mamata, his former political mentor, in 2021, and in Bhabanipur, where he would again take on the TMC supremo and the chief minister herself, the BJP top brass dropped enough hints about whom it would prefer at the helm of the state government.
The BJP top brass also made it a point to get its state leaders to keep aside internal differences and put up a united front publicly when Adhikari filed his nomination for Nandigram.
In a rare gesture, the BJP's West Bengal chief, Samik Bhattacharya, ceremonially handed over the party's symbol to him in full media glare at the party's state headquarters in Kolkata on Sunday.
The party's another heavyweight leader, Dilip Ghosh, joined him in leading a rally before filing his nomination for Nandigram on Monday.
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But as the stature of Adhikari rose within the party, Ghosh was somewhat sidelined and often not-so-subtly gave vent to his ire against the leaders who came to the saffron party from the TMC.
The relations between Ghosh and Adhikari had worsened when the veteran leader had been asked to contest from the state's Bardhaman-Durgapur Lok Sabha constituency in the 2024 parliamentary elections, instead of Medinipur, where he had won in 2019.
Adhikari, according to the party insiders, had played a key role in changing the constituency of Ghosh, who had ultimately lost to Kirti Azad of Trinamool Congress.
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He, however, staged a comeback over the past few months, with the party agreeing to field him in the Kharagpur Sadar for the assembly elections.
But Ghosh's wife, Rinku Majumdar, whose own plea for a ticket for the Rajarhat New Town constituency was turned down by the BJP, recently hit out at Adhikari, criticising him for selectively bending the 'one-family-one-candidate' rule of the party and securing the party's nomination for his brother Soumendu Adhikari in Egra.