West Bengal BJP chief Samik Bhattacharya (PTI)

New Delhi: West Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya on Sunday said the party has not decided on its chief ministerial face for the poll-bound state and will instead seek votes in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.BJP’s move to field Chief Minister and Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee Speculations have intensified about his being the chief opposition party’s CM candidate from Bhabanipur constituency.Former TMC leader Adhikari, who joined BJP before the 2021 assembly elections, is also contesting from his stronghold Nandigram. In 2021, he defeated Banerjee in Nandigram by a slim margin of around 2,000 votes; Later she returned to the Assembly by winning the by-election from Bhabanipur and retained the post of Chief Minister.TMC has repeatedly portrayed the BJP as a party of “outsiders”, a narrative that has worked to the ruling party’s advantage.“The BJP does not project anyone as the chief ministerial candidate. In Delhi and Haryana, whom did the BJP project as the face? We did not. Yet we won. Same thing happened in Odisha. Who did we project as the face? We did not contest those elections with any one face,” he told PTI.In Haryana, the BJP has incumbent Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini in the running for the October 2024 elections. Saini, who had succeeded party colleague Manohar Lal Khattar in March that year, retained the top post even after the party won for the third consecutive time by defeating the Congress.The BJP formed its first government in Odisha in June 2024 and returned to power in Delhi after nearly 30 years in February last year. In both places, it did not project any CM face, with Mohan Charan Majhi in Odisha and Rekha Gupta in Delhi being the post-poll choices.However, Rajya Sabha MP Bhattacharya kept a small window open, saying the party’s top leadership was free to take a “different decision” later.He said, “If, in the next few days, they (top BJP leaders) decide to choose someone and fight under that person, then it will be their decision. But at the moment, there is no such decision and I don’t think it will happen. We fight the elections by putting forward the ‘development man’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom people trust from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, and seek votes based on faith in his vision.”Bhattacharya also expressed confidence that the BJP would secure a “comfortable majority”, although he declined to give numbers or say whether it would be able to cross the two-thirds mark.In 2021, the BJP recorded its best-ever tally with 77 seats, up from just three in 2016, but fell well short of its target of 200.On the other hand, Banerjee, who has been in power since 2011, led TMC to its third consecutive victory by winning 215 seats in the 294-member assembly.Voting will be held in West Bengal on April 23 and 29 and counting of votes will take place on May 4.