New Delhi, July 3 -- Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Samik Bhattacharya was on Thursday officially declared the new president of its West Bengal unit.

Bhattacharya, who is also a Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament, will lead the saffron party into the 2026 assembly elections in the state. The party has been trying to improve roads for some time now.

In the 2021 assembly election, the BJP had won 77 seats in the 294-member Bengal assembly. Since then, the tally has come down to 65, with 12 seats lost either due to bypolls caused by the demise of MLAs or defections to the ruling TMC.

Bhattacharya, 61, was elected unopposed, with no other candidate filing nomination for the post by the stipulated deadline of Wednesday afternoon....