The chief minister and ministers of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) first government in West Bengal will take oath at Kolkata’s historic Brigade Parade Ground on May 9 in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and chief ministers of all BJP-ruled states, a senior party leader said on Wednesday.
“The new BJP government will take oath on May 9 at 10 am at Brigade Parade Ground,” Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya announced.
This is the first time the Bengal chief minister will take oath in a public place rather than the governor’s official residence, the usual venue in the past.
“The selection of ministers will happen at a legislative party meeting at 4 pm on May 8 in the presence of our senior central leaders,” he added.
Shah is the party’s central observer for the selection of Bengal ministers, and Odisha chief minister Mohan Majhi is the co-observer. The legislative party meeting will be held at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in New Town, one of the major projects of the outgoing Trinamool Congress (TMC) government.
Shah, BJP leaders said, is scheduled to arrive in Kolkata on Thursday.
After the Bengal poll results were announced on May 4—the BJP won 207 of 294 seats against the TMC’s 80—the party leadership announced that the oath-taking ceremony will coincide with Pochishe Boishakh (the 25th day of the month of Boishakh), the birth anniversary of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
Located amid the greenery of the Maidan—which is under Vijay Durg (formerly Fort William), the Army’s Eastern Command headquarters—the Brigade Parade Grounds has witnessed some of the biggest political events and rallies in India’s history.
On November 29, 1955, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru felicitated Nikita Khrushchev, then the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin at the Brigade Parade Grounds. Millions attended the public event.
Months after India played a key role in liberating Bangladesh in the 1971 war, the nation’s first Prime Minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, addressed a mass rally at the same location with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on February 6, 1972.
On October 18, 1980, the Left government led by Jyoti Basu in West Bengal felicitated the iconic anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela at Eden Gardens stadium, adjacent to the Brigade Parade grounds.
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