Goa, May 5 -- Suvendu Adhikari, West Bengal's opposition leader, has surged ahead as the frontrunner for chief minister after the BJP's historic assembly poll triumph on Monday. The party clinched 206 of 293 seats, ending Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) dominance with 81 seats.

Adhikari sealed his credentials by defeating Banerjee twice in her home turf-first in Nandigram (2021, by 1,956 votes) and now in Bhabanipur (15,105 votes). He also won Nandigram against TMC's Pabitra Kar by 9,665 votes. "This is a historic victory of Hindutva, Bengal, and Modiji," Adhikari declared, waving his certificate at Kolkata's counting center.

A former TMC minister who defected to BJP in 2020 amid 300 cases from the TMC government, Adhikari ca...