The BJP’s elevation of Suvendu Adhikari as its first chief minister in West Bengal marked the culmination of a campaign that drove the party to success in a state long described as its “final frontier.”Like in the neighbouring Northeast, BJP’s eventual rise to power in West Bengal was led by an individual who joined from a party firmly opposed to the BJP. Adhikari switched from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in December 2020 and went on to defeat his former mentor, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, twice—first in his Nandigram stronghold in 2021 and later in her Bhowanipore bastion in the recent assembly polls.
Suvendu Adhikari
With Adhikari’s elevation, BJP formally placed one of its most prominent recent entrants at the helm in West Bengal, underscoring the party’s continued reliance on “outsiders” to win politically difficult terrains.
BJP’s West Bengal breakthrough
Adhikari’s induction was one among several defections from the Trinamool to BJP in the run-up to the 2021 West Bengal elections. With BJP riding high after winning a record 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, and with “Didi” grappling with anti-incumbency after a decade in power, several TMC leaders joined the saffron camp, confident that there would be a change of guard in Kolkata. However, it was not to be. BJP’s seat share rose from just three to 77 in the 294-member assembly, but Trinamool won 215 constituencies to secure a third consecutive term. This led to several TMC turncoats returning to their parent party, with some BJP MLAs also switching sides.
West Bengal assembly elections 2021 results
Yet, Adhikari stayed back and was appointed leader of the opposition in the assembly. He subsequently became more aggressive in his attacks on Banerjee and TMC.In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, BJP faced another setback in West Bengal, with its tally dropping from 18 constituencies to 12, while Trinamool Congress improved its count from 23 to 29. The state was among several where BJP lost ground, contributing to its fall from 303 to 240 seats nationally and forcing the party to rely on allies to form the government at the Centre.BJP regained momentum in the months that followed, winning a series of state elections before eventually securing a landslide victory in West Bengal.
Bihar before West Bengal
Adhikari’s elevation came less than a month after that of Samrat Choudhary, the Bihar chief minister who, like him, did not begin his political career with the BJP. Choudhary joined the party in 2017 from the Janata Dal (United), after earlier stints with the Samata Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).Son of veteran politician Shakuni Choudhary, Samrat Choudhary succeeded Nitish Kumar, the JD(U) supremo who had led the state for over two decades. Following the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) re-election in a landslide win in the Bihar polls in November 2025, Kumar returned for a record 10th term as CM, with Choudhary serving as one of his deputies.
Bihar election results
However, the signs of a change in leadership had already been there. Besides Kumar’s visible failing health, the BJP, for the first time, became the largest party in Bihar, making a change of guard in Patna a question of “when” and not “if.”
Nitish Kumar retirement
That “when” was answered when Kumar announced last month that he would be returning to Parliament via the Rajya Sabha, paving the way for BJP to assume the chief ministership in Bihar for the first time.
BJP’s Northeast ascent
Before BJP broke through in West Bengal and emerged as the largest party in Bihar, it was the Northeast that the party first turned into a stronghold, beginning with its victory in Assam in 2016.Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is widely seen as the architect of this dominance in the Northeast. A former Congress leader who joined BJP in 2015, Sarma played a key role in the party’s Assam victory the following year. While Sarbananda Sonowal became BJP’s first chief minister in the state, Sarma took over after the party retained power in 2021, with Sonowal moving to the Union cabinet. In the recent assembly polls, BJP under Sarma won 82 seats in the 126-member assembly, crossing the majority mark on its own for the first time and securing a third consecutive term in power. Like Sarma, several of BJP’s sitting or former chief ministers in the Northeast had joined the party only shortly before being elevated to the top post. For instance, Pema Khandu, Manik Saha and N Biren Singh, among others, had been with the Congress before switching to BJP in 2016, but later went on to lead BJP governments in their respective states.
The exceptions
The strategy of inducting outsiders and elevating them to key positions, however, has not worked for BJP in every politically difficult state.In Punjab, former Congress MP Sunil Jakhar joined BJP in May 2022 and was appointed the party’s state unit president a little over a year later. However, the strategy failed to yield electoral dividends. In the 2024 general elections, BJP failed to open its account in Punjab and even lost the two seats it had won in alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal in 2019. Later, reports emerged in September that Jakhar had resigned from the post, but BJP denied the claims and he continues to serve as the party’s Punjab unit chief. He faces a difficult task in making BJP a serious contender in Punjab ahead of the February 2027 elections, where the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress remain the two principal rivals.In a major setback to the AAP, seven of its Rajya Sabha MPs — including Raghav Chadha — joined the BJP last month. All seven MPs had been elected from Punjab, and the BJP hopes their induction will bolster its prospects in the state.Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, BJP failed to return to power despite inducting former chief minister Champai Soren, who switched from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha ahead of the 2024 assembly elections.
Punjab: Next test of BJP’s ‘outsider’ model
With BJP’s rise to power in West Bengal, Jharkhand now stands as the only remaining eastern state outside its control, alongside Mizoram in the Northeast. Its rise in non-Hindi-speaking states, particularly West Bengal, along with Odisha where it formed its maiden government in June 2024 under Mohan Charan Majhi, a homegrown leader, has helped the party shed its image of being confined to the Hindi heartland.The “outsider” model will next be put to the test in Punjab, where BJP has been part of an alliance government but has never governed on its own.
