For a little over a month now, the leadership of West Bengal’s new BJP government under the Chief Ministership of Suvendu Adhikari has been carrying out its work, and from what it appears, the gap between their election promises and the changing reality is even getting wider day by day.
On 9 May 2026, Suvendu Adhikari assumed office as the first-ever Chief Minister of BJP in West Bengal at Brigade Parade Ground. He, so became the leader of a state with a population of 100 million of which majority is poor and living in rural areas and economically vulnerable. Some of the provisions in his party’s manifesto, the Bhoroshar Shopoth (Pledge of Trust), were: 3,000 monthly allowance for women, 200 units of free electricity, Seventh Pay Commission salaries within 45 days, and the new era would mean “Fear Out, Confidence In.” Barely thirty days later, citizens across Bengal are asking a blunt question: where did those promises go?
Welfare Rolled Back, Not Delivered
The most glaring broken promise involves the Annapurna Yojana, the BJP’s replacement for the TMC-era Lakshmir Bhandar welfare scheme. Beneficiaries were told that existing recipients would automatically receive ₹3,000 per month from June 1st. Instead, they were handed a 12-page application form demanding income details of every family member, property disclosure (including whether the home has more than three rooms), and extensive voter data — a bureaucratic maze designed less to include and more to exclude.
Women’s Welfare Minister Agnimitra Paul made matters worse by publicly stating that filling the form correctly would still not guarantee receipt of funds. “Before elections, they told us what we’d get,” frustrated women across Bengal are saying. “Now they’re telling us what will disqualify us.”
On electricity, the BJP’s manifesto promised 200 units free per month, a headline commitment. Instead, the government has announced smart prepaid meter installation across 2 crore WBSEDCL households beginning July, transitioning consumers to advance-payment systems before a single free unit has been delivered. Simultaneously, fuel prices in Kolkata, already the highest in the country, have crossed ₹113.51 per litre for petrol and ₹99.82 for diesel, following four price hikes in barely 15-20 days from the Modi government, with the state BJP offering no relief on its own tax component despite having demanded exactly that from the previous TMC administration.
Farmers and Minorities Pay the Price
In an agrarian state where farming is the primary occupation for most rural folk, the Adhikari government’s move to reduce Rabi paddy procurement targets by 60% is a heavy blow to the economy. They have set the target as 2 lakh metric tonnes this year against 5 lakh metric tonnes last year. What is more, nine major districts have been completely left out of the procurement list: Cooch Behar Jalpaiguri Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur Malda Murshidabad Birbhum Bankura, and Purba Medinipur. Farmers here are now cornered into distress selling through middlemen at exploitative rates, with no official channel available.
The BJP has also hurriedly announced a major change to reservations for backward sections among the Muslim communities by going back to the list before 2011 and drastically reducing the quota from 17% to 7%. The 17% quota which was introduced in February 2010 by the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government following the clear advice of the Backward Classes Commission, effectively secured the communities which had been identified in Bengal as the most educationally and economically backward. Minister Paul slammed the old quota as “vote-bank politics, ” But, the opposition highlights that nearly 2 crore economically backward minority citizens have now been deprived of the constitutional safeguards for their progress.
Ideological Overreach vs. Economic Silence
What makes the governance failure even more striking is the contrast in urgency. The administration moved at lightning speed to enforce Vande Mataram recitation in schools and madrasas, implement the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and announce a “Detect, Delete, Deport” policy for alleged infiltrators, with plans for Assam-style detention centres in the state. Meanwhile, the Seventh Pay Commission implementation, promised within 45 days, resulted only in an “in-principle approval” to form a commission, a repackaging of the previous TMC government’s February budget announcement that state employees have flatly rejected.
The 42% Dearness Allowance gap between central and state government employees, a cause the BJP championed loudly in opposition, has attracted near-total silence from the Chief Minister since taking office.
Law and Order: Rhetoric Without Substance
Adhikari has repeatedly pledged “zero tolerance” for unrest and positioned law and order as the centre piece of his administration. Yet street attacks on TMC leaders under the guise of “public wrath,” and incidents of accused individuals being paraded half-naked through streets, have alarmed civil liberties groups. These scenes, critics warn, echo the very lawlessness the BJP spent years condemning under the TMC. Ironically, the attacks are generating sympathy for the deeply unpopular Trinamool, a party that had been almost completely sidelined by internal collapse, and risk rehabilitating an opposition that voters had decisively rejected.
One Month, One Verdict
West Bengal’s voters handed the BJP a historic mandate, ending fifteen years of TMC rule in a state that has never had an easy relationship with Delhi-aligned governance. What they received in return, in thirty days, is higher fuel prices with no state-level tax relief, a welfare scheme weaponized as an exclusion tool, gutted OBC protections, abandoned farmers, and a government whose first legislative instinct was cultural enforcement rather than economic relief.
The Bhoroshar Shopoth is fast becoming West Bengal’s most expensive broken promise.
