The BJP on Monday unanimously elected Suvendu Adhikari as the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly to take on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced the name of the officer as the leader of the BJP Legislature Party in the assembly after a meeting of legislators at the party’s Hastings office.
The saffron party has emerged as the main opposition party winning 77 seats in the 294-member house.
Adikari is preferred by the saffron party, who also took senior party leaders like Mukul Roy elected from Nadia constituency for Banerjee at home.
The ruling TMC won 213 seats, while the Indian Secular Front emerged victorious in one assembly constituency and an independent R S Lepcha, belonging to the Binay Tamang faction of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), won from Kalimpong.
Voting in the two assembly constituencies will take place in the future.
As the BJP has a large presence in the opposition camp, it became the leader of the opposition in the House, party president Dilip Ghosh later told reporters in a media briefing.
When the 22 MLAs present in the meeting supported the officer, the absentee districts were on the side of activists facing the TMC attack, while two are down with the COVID, Ghosh said, asking about the reason Gaya why all the MLAs were not present? Meeting.
‘If others do not oppose that selection which means they are supporting the proposed name. Adikari said that it is not mandatory to support every MLA outright.
Senior leader Mukul Roy, who was elected from an assembly constituency in Nadia district, said, “Suvendu will take the BJP to greater heights in the house and fight the misdeeds of the ruling party in the state.” While Roy was once considered number two in the TMC, the saffron party was the key architect in driving many legislators away from the ruling camp.
The officer said, ‘I am an MLA since 2006. I have seen the arrogance of the then CPI (M) -led rule. We must play the role of the opposition in the Legislative Assembly, following the parliamentary norms. He said that the BJP would continue to attack the Trinamool Congress on political rivals, the terror spread by the TMC and the democratic rights of every citizen.
Union ministers and senior BJP leaders Ravi Shankar Prasad and Bhupendra Yadav were observers in the election of Adhikari as the leader of the BJP Legislature Party.
The officer, who won the election from Nandigram Assembly seat, defeated his former boss with political rival Mamata Banerjee by a margin of over 1900 votes.
The officer was one of Banerjee’s key allies during the Nandigram land movement in 2007–08 and was instrumental in the formation of the Land Acquisition Committee set up in 2007, which triggered an uphill struggle to establish the then Buddhadeb Bhattacharya government, a petrochemical in the region. The Hub acquires thousands of acres of agricultural land.
A former Minister of State, handling several important departments including Transport and Environment, Adhikari joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in December last year.