Kumar Bahukhandi
Union Home Minister Amit Shah. (PTI Photo)
Governor dissolves Assembly as term ends, SIR tribunal judge quits
Kolkata: Union Home Minister Amit Shah will reach West Bengal on Friday to chair a meeting with the 207 newly-elected BJP candidates of the Assembly Election to select the chief minister of the first BJP government and supervise its oath-taking ceremony in presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 9 here.
A day before his visit, governor RN Ravi dissolved the existing Assembly with the end of its term after Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee refused to resign from the chief minister’s post despite losing in her home turf, Bhowanipore, and the power in the state.
Amit Shah, who was earlier supposed to reach the state on Thursday, will land at the NSCBI Airport at around 12.40 pm on Friday and reach a hotel in New Town. He will hold a couple of meetings from 2 pm to 8 pm. The main agenda among them is with the BJP legislature party to pick the CM face for which Suvendu Adhikari, who won at Bhowanipore and Nandigram, is a front-runner.
The new government is expected to have a deputy CM which the previous rule did not have. While Tapas Roy, who won at Manicktala in North Kolkata, is considered for the Assembly Speaker’s post, names of Agnimitra Paul, Dilip Ghosh, Swapan Dasgupta, Sajal Ghosh, Bankim Ghosh, Sharadwat Mukherjee, Naman Rai among others are doing rounds for various key portfolios.
On Thursday, the governor terminated the Assembly in an order stating, “In exercise of the power conferred on me by sub-clause (b) of Clause (2) of Article 174 of the Constitution of India, I hereby dissolve the Legislative Assembly of West Bengal with effect from 07th of May, 2026.”
In another development, former Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court TS Sivagnanam, who was appointed along with 18 other retired judges by the Election Commission following a Supreme Court (SC) order to head the appellate tribunals to hear the pleas of the voters whose names were deleted in the special intensive revision (SIR), has resigned, citing “personal reasons.”
He was also in the panel of three retired judges which was set up by Chief Justice Sujoy Pal of the Calcutta High Court, following the SC order, about how the tribunals would function to resolve the prayers of the deleted voters in the SIR.
