Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Suvendu Adhikari will contest from two constituencies – Nandigram in Purba Medinipur district and Bhabanipur in Kolkata. File.
| Photo Credit: ANI
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday (March 16, 2026) announced its first list of 144 candidates for the Assembly election in West Bengal.
Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Suvendu Adhikari will contest from two constituencies – Nandigram in Purba Medinipur district and Bhabanipur in Kolkata. At Bhabanipur, he is likely to take on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Former State BJP president Dilip Ghosh has been nominated from Kharagpur Sadar, while former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta has been fielded from Kolkata’s Rashbehari.
The saffron party has given tickets to 41 sitting MLAs and three former legislators and two former MPs. The list has 11 women, but no Muslim candidates.
Among the sitting MLAs, the BJP has renominated Agnimitra Pal from Asansol Dakshin (Paschim Bardhaman district), Chandana Bauri from Saltora (Bankura), Shikha Chatterjee from Dabgram-Phulbari (Jalpaiguri) and Malti Rava Roy from Tufanganj (Cooch Behar).
BJP leader and sitting MLA Shankar Ghosh is contesting again from Siliguri in Darjeeling district and actor-turned-politician Rudranil Ghosh is contesting from Shipbur in Howrah. Former Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh’s son Pawan Singh, who is also the sitting MLA of Bhatpara Assembly, is defending his seat.
Debjit Sarkar, chief spokesperson of the party in West Bengal, said that the list has 36 candidates aged below 40 years. Similarly, 72 nominees are in the 41-55 age group while 32 candidates are in the 56-70 years age bracket. Four candidates fielded by the BJP are above 70, he added.
In the 2021 Assembly election, the BJP won two seats in Murshidabad district — Subrata Maitra in Berhampur and Gauri Shankar Ghosh in Murshidabad. Both have been fielded again in the seats. BJP MLAs Parthasarathi Chatterjee and Asim Biswas too will contest from their current seats in Nadia district – Ranaghat Uttar Paschim and Ranaghat Uttar Purba, while Biman Ghosh and Sushant Ghosh, sitting BJP MLAs from Purshura and Khanakul respectively in Hooghly district, will defend their seats. Former MLA Deepak Kumar Halder has been fielded from Diamond Harbour.
However, the biggest highlight of the candidate list has been the fielding of Mr. Adhikari from Bhabanipur, where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is a sitting MLA. In the 2021 Assembly election, Mr. Adhikari had defeated Ms. Banerjee from Nandigram by a margin of 1,956 votes. The Chief Minister had to return to Bhabanipur and get herself elected to the West Bengal Assembly in a byelection.
Recently, Ms. Banerjee had said that even if one voter is left at Bhabanipur after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, she would still win the Assembly election. The candidate list also sees the return of Mr. Ghosh to his home turf Kharagpur Sadar. Mr. Ghosh is considered the most successful Bengal BJP president, under whose leadership BJP won 18 Lok Sabha seats in 2019.
There are 294 Assembly seats in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. The election will be held in two phases on April 23 and 29, and votes will be counted on May 4.
Published – March 17, 2026 12:37 am IST
