West Bengal Assembly elections: BJP ‘trapped’ Mamata in her seat by nominating Suvendu from Bhabanipur, says Dilip Ghosh

Senior BJP leader Dilip Ghosh said the party has “trapped” TMC chief Mamata Banerjee in her constituency, Bhabanipur, by fielding leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari from the seat in south Kolkata.

He asserted that the move has removed the elbow room the Chief Minister usually keeps to cover her bases across West Bengal during her poll campaigns for the Trinamool Congress.

Speaking to PTI in an interview, Mr. Ghosh said, “The biggest surprise in the TMC’s candidate list this time is that it doesn’t have any surprises.” The candidate list of the TMC was announced by Ms. Banerjee on Tuesday (March 17, 2026).

“I think that by pitting Suvendu Adhikari against Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur, we have managed to trap the TMC supremo in one corner. She will now have to focus on the seat to ensure her win there. Minister Firhad Hakim began his election campaign from there and that surely means something. It’s a tough challenge for her. She is in considerable tension. We pinned her down there,” Mr. Ghosh said.

Commenting on his party’s prospects in Bhabanipur, Mr. Ghosh said the SIR deletions have given BJP the required edge in that seat and stressed that Ms. Banerjee’s defeat in Nandigram in 2021 showed she isn’t invincible.

“We have already defeated Mamata Banerjee once, and we can do it again. She had gone there (Nandigram) and lost. This time, we will come to her seat and win. Over 50,000 voter names have been deleted in her constituency post SIR screening. That’s almost equal to her winning margin. So yes, there’s definitely a chance,” Mr. Ghosh said.

Asked whether Mr. Adhikari’s candidature from Bhabanipur meant that the BJP acknowledged him as the Chief Ministerial face, Mr. Ghosh said, “Anyone can become a CM. How many people knew about Mohan Charan Majhi before he became Odisha CM? That’s how the BJP operates. However, Mr. Suvendu, without doubt, is the most experienced leader in our party from the perspective of running an administration.” Calling the TMC’s candidate list a “risk-free approach to polls”, Mr. Ghosh said Ms. Banerjee couldn’t afford surprises this time since “she knows she has a tough fight ahead”.

“They fielded tried-and-tested leaders. The party is on the back foot for numerous reasons. Ms. Mamata has not given tickets to celebrities this time. She knows her heydays are gone. She will have to work hard for every bit of foothold. That’s why she has chosen people who won’t shy away from working hard for victory,” he added.

Considered the “most successful” president of the BJP’s West Bengal unit, Mr. Ghosh steered his party to win 18 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state in the 2019 general elections, bagging 40.25% of the votes without any major political alliance.

Mr. Ghosh had himself won the Medinipur Lok Sabha seat by dwarfing senior TMC leader Manas Bhuniya by nearly 89,000 votes, amassing a vote share of nearly 49%.

Earlier, in the 2016 State elections, Mr. Ghosh had humbled veteran Congress leader Gyan Singh Sohanpal, a 10-term MLA from Kharagpur Sadar, to wrest the seat and become one of the three BJP MLAs in the state assembly.

Despite his performance during his dual tenure as the state BJP chief, Mr. Ghosh was pushed to the Bardhaman-Durgapur Lok Sabha seat in 2024, where he was humiliated by TMC’s Kirti Azad by a margin of nearly 1.38 lakh votes.

Putting that bitter experience behind, the 61-year-old leader said his nomination from Kharagpur Sadar for the elections felt like a career turning full circle.

“Of course, I was sad when I lost in Durgapur. I took it sentimentally because I had never lost elections before. I wasn’t responsible for it. I had no time to prepare. I did my best and there was a lot of hype over my campaigns. I lost because polls in the state cannot be won with hypes,” Mr. Ghosh admitted.

“I returned to Kharagpur within two months. I had no post, no responsibilities, but I stayed in touch with my grassroots workers and continued to work there. Now my party has again chosen me as the candidate from Kharagpur Sadar and I am back to where it began for me,” he added.

Savouring his return to the seat, Mr. Ghosh said he always preferred politics in West Bengal over that in Delhi.

“I did not come to West Bengal to fight elections; I came here to build the party. But I had to play the role of an all-rounder because the party asked me to. I got a taste of parliamentary politics. But I never developed an attraction for Delhi politics,” he said, referring to his transfer as an RSS functionary from the Andamans in 2015 and taking up the BJP’s mantle in West Bengal.

“West Bengal throws me a challenge like no other. What can be easily achieved in the rest of India is not true for the state. Also, there’s no dearth of national leaders in our party. I was always interested in staying here and fighting until a change is brought about,” he added.

Speaking of his prospects in Kharagpur Sadar, Mr. Ghosh said the goal this time was larger than his own seat.

“We are fighting to win West Bengal. It isn’t about Dilip Ghosh’s individual victory. That is a given. But the larger task is to bag a sufficient number of seats so that we can form the government,” he said.

A torchbearer of old guards in the state BJP, Mr. Ghosh said the balance between the old and new faces in the party’s candidate list this time was just right.

“Fresh blood must be infused in every election. Candidates considered more efficient than those before were included,” he said.

On his party choosing to drop economist Ashok Lahiri from the list, Mr. Ghosh said, “He is slotted for a greater role at the Centre.”

Published – March 18, 2026 05:16 pm IST