Chief Minister of West Bengal

The Chief Minister of West Bengal (ISO: Paścimabaṅgera Mukhyamantrī) is the de facto head of the executive branch of the Government of West Bengal, the subnational authority of the Indian state of West Bengal. The chief minister is the head of the Council of Ministers and advises the governor on the appointment of ministers. Along with the council of ministers, the chief minister exercises executive authority in the state. The governor appoints the chief minister, whose council of ministers are collectively responsible to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. The chief minister also serves as the Leader of the House in the Legislative Assembly. On 17 August 1947, the former British Indian province of Bengal was partitioned into the Pakistani province of East Bengal and the Indian state of West Bengal. Prafulla Chandra Ghosh of the Indian National Congress (INC) became the state's first head of government as Premier before the office of chief minister formally came into effect. Following the adoption of the Constitution of India on 26 January 1950, Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy became the first Chief Minister of West Bengal. Between 1967 and 1972, West Bengal witnessed a prolonged period of political instability marked by three assembly elections, four coalition governments, and three periods of President's rule. Stability returned under Siddhartha Shankar Ray of the INC, who became the first chief minister after this phase to complete a full five-year term.

Since independence, the state has had nine chief ministers. The victory of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front in the 1977 assembly election marked the beginning of 34 years of uninterrupted Left Front rule in West Bengal. Jyoti Basu served as chief minister for over 23 years, making him the longest-serving chief minister in India at the time; the record was later surpassed in 2018 by Pawan Kumar Chamling of Sikkim. He was succeeded by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, under whose leadership the Left Front government remained in office until its defeat in the 2011 assembly election. In the 2011 assembly election, the Trinamool Congress defeated the Left Front, ending its 34-year rule in the state, one of the longest-serving democratically elected Communist governments in the world. The party's leader, Mamata Banerjee, was sworn in on 20 May 2011 as the first woman chief minister of West Bengal. She was subsequently re-elected in the 2016 and 2021 assembly elections. On 7 May 2026, the Governor of West Bengal, R. N. Ravi, dissolved the 17th Assembly, ending the 15- year tenure of TMC. A 2-day vacancy in the chief ministerships of West Bengal, emerged during this period. However, no proclamation of President's rule was declared. The conclusion of this vacancy came into an effect on 9 May 2026, which the emergence of the government run by Suvendu Adhikari. In the 2026 assembly election, the Bharatiya Janata Party won a majority in the Legislative Assembly, ending the 15-year tenure of the All India Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal. Suvendu Adhikari was sworn in as the first BJP Chief Minister of the state on 9 May 2026, coinciding with the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union ministers, and chief ministers from several NDA-ruled states.