KOLKATA: Didi, built her politics on grit long before power ever came within reach.Born on January 5, 1955, she had no political lineage to fall back on.
At 9, she lost her father. Her journey began in the ranks of the Indian National Congress, where she emerged as an unusually assertive young voice.By 1983, at just 28, she was already immersed in active politics as the party held a full session in Kolkata.Even then, those around her sensed a restless ambition—she wasn’t there to remain in the background.That instinct translated into a stunning breakthrough in the 1984 general election, when she defeated veteran communist leader Somnath Chatterjee to become one of India’s youngest MPs.
State Youth Congress (I) President Ms. Mamata Banerjee leads a protest rally to the Calcutta Corporation for protest against Collins Lane House collapsed massacre, in Calcutta on March 5, 1991.
The win marked her arrival on the national stage, but her politics never drifted far from Bengal’s streets.She lost in 1989, only to return in 1991, entering the government led by PV Narasimha Rao as the youngest Minister of State for Sports and Youth Affairs.Over the years, Banerjee crafted an image that set her apart. Admirers saw fearlessness; critics saw defiance.Either way, she was never ignored.She positioned herself as a maverick—taking on both the Congress and the Left at different points, refusing to stay confined within political binaries.
Mamata Banerjee, Congress Party Leader and Member of Parliament being garlanded by Party Members, after Banerjee becomes one of India’s youngest parliamentarians ever, in New Delhi during 1980. (TOI Image, Archive TOI)
Her rise was powered as much by confrontation as by connection, a mix that turned her into one of Bengal’s most recognisable mass leaders.The sunsetDecades later, that same defiant streak was on display when her dominance faced its toughest test.As the BJP surged and looked set to wrest Bengal from her grip, Banerjee reached out to her party workers with a familiar call to resist.“Wait for sunset. We will win. We will fight like tiger cubs,” she said this on Monday afternoon after arriving at the Bhabanipur counting centre, where she was leading against Suvendu Adhikari, though her margin was narrowing with each passing hour.But this time, the sunset brought an end rather than a turnaround.After 15 years in power, the leader who had spent three decades shaping Bengal’s political narrative saw her rule come to a close—marking the fall of one of India’s most enduring and fiercely individual political journeys.A BJP waveThe BJP’s surge across West Bengal pointed to something deeper than a routine electoral swing.The party’s gains cut across both rural belts and urban pockets, dismantling Trinamool Congress strongholds that had held firm for years.At the heart of this shift was a growing disconnect between the state leadership and local realities. Mamata Banerjee’s campaign centred heavily on her personal appeal, positioning herself as the face of governance across constituencies.But for many voters, that message no longer ring a bell.“Didi said she was the candidate everywhere, but when we looked at our broken roads and closed-down schools and local netas demanding ‘cut-money’ for every house repair, we didn’t see her face. We saw faces of local bullies,” Animesh Mondal, a schoolteacher from North 24 Parganas, told TOI.
The election was shaped not just by the BJP’s rise, but by a sharp decline in Trinamool’s own vote share.“This is a case of serious anti-incumbency where the Trinamool simply could not consolidate its vote share,” said Zaad Mahmood, a political science professor at Presidency University.Economic concerns, particularly unemployment, played a decisive role.Despite repeated promises of industrial growth, many young people said opportunities remained scarce, forcing migration to states such as Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.The state government’s youth stipend scheme, intended as relief, appears to have backfired among aspirational voters.Allegations of corruption at multiple levels of governance emerged as a recurring theme in voter accounts.Importantly, dissatisfaction appeared to cut across communities that had traditionally backed the Trinamool.Mamata Banerjee’s centralised approach, while effective in earlier elections, may have limited her ability to address corruption and inefficiencies at the grassroots.“She overlooked the corruption in her own backyard for too long,” one analyst, told TOI.In a significant shift, voting patterns in Bengal’s Muslim-majority districts broke away from the long-held trend of near-total support for the Trinamool Congress altering the electoral arithmetic in a state where minority voters play a decisive role in 143 of 294 assembly seats.Across districts such as Murshidabad, Malda and parts of South 24 Parganas, the minority vote fragmented, with support distributed among the Congress, CPM, ISF, AJUP and in certain pockets, even the BJP.
TMC failed to open account in 9 of 23 districtsBJP won every seat in nine of West Bengal’s 23 districts.The scale of the victory marks the BJP’s first ascent to power in West Bengal, ending the 15-year rule of Didi.The party secured 206 seats in the 294-member assembly, crossing the two-thirds majority mark, while the TMC was reduced to around 80.
In north Bengal, the BJP dominated the hill districts of Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar, where the TMC and its allies failed to win a single seat.Across the wider north Bengal region, the BJP secured 40 of 54 seats, sharply reducing the TMC’s presence.The results have reignited debate around the future of the Gorkha Territorial Administration (GTA).Union home minister Amit Shah had earlier promised a “permanent solution to the hill problems within the ambit of the Constitutional framework”, which BJP MP Raju Bista interpreted as a signal that the GTA could be scrapped if the party came to power.In the forested belt of Purulia, Bankura and Jhargram — collectively known as Jungal Mahal — the TMC failed to win a single seat.Observers pointed to shifting support among the Kudmi-Mahato community, dissatisfaction over delayed Scheduled Tribe status, and internal divisions within the TMC.The BJP also made gains in the industrial district of Paschim Bardhaman, winning all nine seats — six of which had been held by the TMC in the previous election.Local TMC workers attributed the defeat to leadership issues.In the hills, Anit Thapa, chief of the Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha and head of the GTA, said the loss was due to an “overall anti-establishment voting” trend.In Siliguri, defeated TMC leader Goutam Deb pointed to “SIR deletions and added factors concerning the administration” as reasons for the party’s performance.Meanwhile, BJP leader Jitendra Tewari described the verdict as a mandate to “reindustrialise Bengal, create job opportunities and ensure safety of women”.(With inputs from Dipawali Mitra and Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay)