Description

Mamata Banerjee (Bengali pronunciation: [mɔmot̪a bɔnd̪ːopad̪d̪ʱae̯] ⓘ; born 5 January 1955) is an Indian politician who is serving as the eighth and current chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal since 20 May 2011, the first woman to hold the office. Having served multiple times as a Union Cabinet Minister, Mamata Banerjee became the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the first time in 2011. She founded the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC or TMC) in 1998 after separating from the Indian National Congress, and became its second chairperson later in 2001. She often refers to herself as Didi (meaning, elder sister in Bengali).[12][13] Banerjee previously served twice as Minister of Railways, the first woman to do so.[14] She is also the second female Minister of Coal, and Minister of Human Resource Development, Youth Affairs and Sports, Women and Child Development in the cabinet of the Indian government.[15] She rose to prominence after opposing the erstwhile land acquisition policies for industrialisation of the Communist-led government in West Bengal for Special Economic Zones at the cost of agriculturalists and farmers at Singur.[16] In 2011, Banerjee pulled off a landslide victory for the AITC alliance in West Bengal, defeating the 34-year-old Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government, the world's longest-serving democratically elected communist-led government.[17][18][19] She served as the member of West Bengal Legislative Assembly from Bhabanipur from 2011 to 2021. She contested the Nandigram assembly seat and lost to the BJP's Suvendu Adhikari in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections,[20][a] though her party won a large majority of seats.[21] She is the third West Bengal Chief Minister to lose an election from her own constituency, after Prafulla Chandra Sen in 1967 and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in 2011. Mamata challenged the result of Nandigram Constituency in Calcutta High Court and the matter is sub judice.[22] She led her party to a landslide victory in the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls.[23][24][25] She got elected as member of West Bengal Legislative Assembly again from Bhabanipur constituency in the bypoll.[26] Currently India has only two female incumbent Chief Ministers; she is one of them.[citation needed]