Mamata Banerjee

Mamata Banerjee ( 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.

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.

She led her party to a landslide victory in the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls.

She got elected as member of West Bengal Legislative Assembly again from Bhabanipur constituency in the bypoll.

She is the only female incumbent Chief Minister in India at present.

Banerjee was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal, to a Bengali Hindu Brahmin family.

Her parents were Promileswar Banerjee and Gayetri Devi.

Banerjee's father, Promileswar died due to lack of medical treatment, when she was 17.

In 1970, Banerjee completed the higher secondary board examination from Deshbandhu Sishu Sikshalay.

She received a bachelor's degree in history from Jogamaya Devi College.

Later, she earned her master's degree in Islamic history from the University of Calcutta.

This was followed by a degree in education from Shri Shikshayatan College and a law degree from Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri Law College, Kolkata.

Banerjee became involved with politics when she was only 15.

While studying at the Jogamaya Devi College, she established Chhatra Parishad Unions, the student wing of the Congress (I) Party, defeating the All India Democratic Students Organisation affiliated with the Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist).

She continued in the Congress (I) Party in West Bengal, serving in a variety of positions within the party and in other local political organisations.

Banerjee began her political career in the Congress party as a young woman in the 1970s.

In 1975 she gained attention in the press media when she danced on the car of socialist activist and politician Jayaprakash Narayan as a protest against him.

She quickly rose in the ranks of the local Congress group and remained the general secretary of Mahila Congress (Indira), West Bengal, from 1976 to 1980.

In the 1984 general election, Banerjee became one of India's youngest parliamentarians ever, defeating veteran Communist politician Somnath Chatterjee, to win the Jadavpur parliamentary Constituency in West Bengal.

She also became the general secretary of the Indian Youth Congress in 1984.

She lost her seat to Malini Bhattacharya of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the 1989 general elections in an anti-Congress wave.

She was re-elected in the 1991 general elections, having settled into the Calcutta South constituency.

Banerjee was appointed the Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development, Youth Affairs and Sports, and Women and Child Development in 1991 by prime minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao.

As the sports minister, she announced that she would resign and protested in a rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata, against the Government's indifference towards her proposal to improve sports in the country.

In December 1992, Banerjee took a physically challenged girl, Felani Basak, who was allegedly raped by CPI(M) cadres to Writer's Building to the then Chief Minister Jyoti Basu but was harassed by the police before being arrested and put on detention.

She had sworn she would enter the building again only as chief minister.

She was discharged of her portfolios in 1993.

She retained the Kolkata South seat in the 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2009 general elections.

In April 1996, she alleged that Congress was behaving as a stooge of the CPI-M in West Bengal.

She said that she was the lone voice of reason and wanted a "clean Congress".

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 is often referred to as Didi (meaning, elder sister in Bengali).

Banerjee previously served twice as Minister of Railways, the first woman to do so.

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.

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.

Having served multiple times as a Union Cabinet Minister, Mamata Banerjee became the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the first time in 2011.

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, in the process.

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, though her party won a large majority of seats.