Kolkata: A delegation of Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, led by its West Bengal legislature party leader Suvendu Adhikari, on Friday reached Lok Bhavan to formally stake its claim to form the government with Governor R.N. Ravi.
State BJP President and Rajya Sabha member Samik Bhattacharya, as well as several party MPs from the state and senior state party leaders, were also present in the delegation.
Adhikari and Bhattacharya jointly handed over a letter staking formal claim for forming the new government carrying the signatures of all the 207 BJP legislators.
The oath ceremony will be conducted on Saturday at 10 a.m., which coincides with the birth anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore as per the Bengali calendar.
The oath ceremony will be administered by Governor Ravi himself in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Chief Ministers from other BJP-ruled states, some members of the Union Cabinet and several top Central BJP leaders.
On Thursday evening, the Governor had issued the order for dissolution of the earlier Assembly, which meant automatic dissolution of the previous Mamata Banerjee-led government.
This decision of the Governor automatically made Banerjee the former Chief Minister, although she had not followed the traditional protocol of submitting her resignation to him.
Even after officially becoming the former Chief Minister, Banerjee’s Facebook and X accounts carry the tag of “Founder Chairperson All India Trinamool Congress. Honourable Chief Minister, West Bengal”.
Suvendu Adhikari will become the ninth Chief Minister of West Bengal, succeeding Banerjee, who had occupied the post for the last 15 years since 2011, which marked the end of the 24-year Left Front regime in West Bengal and the beginning of the Trinamool Congress government.
After being unanimously selected as the leader of the legislature party, Adhikari said that he will run the new state administration on the basis of “collective leadership” instead of imposing all his decisions on the other cabinet members.
(IANS)
