West Bengal’s Chief Minister will be sworn in on May 9, the state unit of the BJP said on Tuesday, a day after the party’s sweep of the eastern state which delivered a shock upset for Mamata Banerjee-led TMC.Samik Bhattacharya, BJP Bengal chief and a long-time RSS hand, today said the oath-taking ceremony of the new CM will be on May 9.With this, the focus has shifted to the hopefuls with former Mamata aide Suvendu Adhikari topping the list alongside former state chief of the BJP Dilip Ghosh. A section of BJP leaders say the party may also install a woman CM to power Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s women’s empowerment pitch which resonated deeply with the women voters of Bengal.But overall, Suvendu Adhikari appears to be topping the list of BJP CM hopefuls in Bengal. Like former Congressman Himanta Biswa Sarma who turned around the northeast for the BJP after joining in 2015, Suvendu has aided BJP’s quick rise to power in a formerly electorally barren state.Yesterday, Adhikari created history in the state by defeating a sitting Chief Minister twice in a row — first in Nandigram in 2021 and again in Bhabanipur yesterday. The giant Mamata slayer wiped the CM out of her bastion, long regarded as the TMC’s impregnable fortress.Adhikari’s transformation from a Mamata aide to a leader in his own right has been phenomenal.He has now proved beyond doubt that he was the force behind Mamata’s rise against the Left when she took them on in the anti-Tata Nandigram movement in 2007 which laid the ground for TMC’s rise in the state.After switching over to the BJP in 2020, Adhikari has silently worked on the ground nurturing electoral pockets for the BJP.He accepted Amit Shah’s challenge of contesting from two seats this time — his own seat Nandigram and against Mamata in Bhabanipur.He delivered on both.