Union Home Minister Amit Shah arrived in Kolkata on Friday (May 8, 2026) morning to attend the BJP’s legislature party meeting, in which its leader will be elected, and the swearing-in ceremony of the party’s first government in West Bengal.

Mr. Shah was received at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport by BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, among others. 

In the afternoon, Mr. Shah will attend the legislature party meeting of the BJP at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre.

- PTI

The Trinamool government had a massive beneficiary network through its multiple schemes targeting women, workers as well as the youth. Moreover, the BJP was portrayed as an ‘outsider’, incompatible to the ethos of Bengali culture. Also, the question of disenfranchisement through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was also a major electoral talking-point. In spite of all these issues, supposedly favouring the ruling party, the BJP has won a thumping majority in the State. What explains these results?

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The BJP legislature party is scheduled to meet in Kolkata on Friday (May 8, 2026) in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah to formally elect its leader, with Suvendu Adhikari emerging as the frontrunner to become the party’s first Chief Minister in West Bengal.

The BJP registered a historic victory in the just-held Assembly elections, ending the TMC’s 15-year rule and dealing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee one of the biggest setbacks of her political career.

Though the BJP has not officially announced its Chief Ministerial choice, Mr. Adhikari has emerged as the frontrunner after securing two of the most politically significant victories -- retaining Nandigram, where he defeated Ms. Banerjee in 2021, and now wresting Bhabanipur, long regarded as the TMC supremo’s pocket borough.

- PTI

West Bengal was for decades an unfinished project for the party, as Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of the Jana Sangha — the predecessor of BJP, hailed from the State and played a significant part in setting up the tone of Hindutva politics in pre- Independent India.

The 17th West Bengal Legislative Assembly which was sworn in after the 2021 assembly elections now stands dissolved. The development is significant because Mamata Banerjee had declared that she would not resign as Chief Minister of the State.