Weeks before Suvendu Adhikari defected from the Trinamool Congress to join the BJP in December 2020, several senior Trinamool leaders tried to persuade him to stay. But Mr. Adhikari’s close aides knew that he had made up his mind: he wanted to become the Chief Minister of West Bengal — an ambition he could never realise had he remained with the Trinamool.
Mr. Adhikari was the most promising of the second generation of Trinamool leaders until Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee emerged on the political scene. At the age of 27, Abhishek was elected MP from the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha seat in 2014. By then, Mr. Adhikari had emerged as a prominent Trinamool leader who challenged the organisational might of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) during the Nandigram protests.
