Decisive leader with street cred: Why BJP chose Suvendu Adhikari as Bengal CM

The Indian Express:

The BJP’s decision to appoint Suvendu Adhikari as the West Bengal CM flows from a need to have a decisive leader at the helm who can steer the new government as it goes about fulfilling the primary promises it made in its manifesto about stopping the entry of undocumented immigrants from across the Bangladesh border and implementing the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), among other things.

Setting the tone, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who was the central observer at the meeting of the BJP Legislature Party on Friday, said, “Now infiltration and cow smuggling will become impossible in West Bengal.” In Bengal, one of the BJP’s main planks has been infiltration and the accompanying demographic changes.

Adhikari has governance experience — having been a minister in the second Trinamool Congress (TMC) government — and can deal with administrative issues with a strong hand.

By appointing Adhikari, the BJP also keeps its word that a Bengali will be the CM, thereby disproving the TMC’s election narrative that electing the party would mean handing over the state to “bohiragatos (outsiders)”. Adhikari is a leader who is quite in the mould of Mamata Banerjee — someone with a streetfighter mentality who is equally at ease running an administration.

BJP insiders said that with the new government expected to publish a white paper on the TMC’s corruption and set up a Commission — Adhikari reiterated this in his speech on Friday — several leaders of the Opposition party may come under the scanner. To see the party through such moves and the implementation of its other core agenda, it needed a resolute leader with convictions at the helm.