With hat-trick as CM, Didi cements her reputation as 'giant-killer'

Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee cemented her reputation as a 'giant-killer' as she became the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the third consecutive term.

Even as the odds were stacked against her this time with many of her trusted lieutenants joining the BJP, and the saffron party’s record success in the last Lok Sabha elections, the mercurial leader trounced the BJP’s election machinery led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

With her latest victory Mamata cemented her reputation as the biggest mass leader in Bengal after former Chief Minister and CPI(M) stalwart Jyoti Basu who ruled Bengal from 1977 to 2000. From being a firebrand Youth Congress leader to founding the TMC in 1998 after splitting from the Congress, Mamata has come a long way.

She made her presence felt as a 'giant-killer' for the first time when she defeated heavyweight CPI(M) leader and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha late Somnath Chatterjee from the Jadavpur constituency in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections. Apart from her latest loss to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram, Mamata only suffered another defeat in elections when she lost the seat to CPI(M)’s Malini Bhattacharya in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections.

Read | BJP weathers TMC storm in north Bengal

Her agitation against the Left Front government reached a peak in 2007 and 2008 when she shook the roots of the Left regime through intense agitation against the government’s bid to acquire farm land for industrialisation.

The land agitations at Singur and Nandigram boosted her image as a formidable rival of the once mighty CPI(M) and finally catapulted her to power for the first time in the 2011 Assembly elections. The TMC decimated the Left Front by winning 184 seats while its the then ally Congress won 42 seats. This time, the TMC won 213 seats.

Several factors led to Mamata’s thumping victory in the Assembly elections, which put a question mark on the near invincible image of the Modi-Shah duo.

The BJP’s highly polarised campaign and the confusion over the CAA and the NRC seems to have further consolidated the Muslim votes behind the TMC. Muslims comprise of nearly 30% of the population in Bengal. For instance in Murshidabad district, an erstwhile Congress bastion, which has a Muslim population of about 70%, the TMC won 18 out of the 22 seats.

As for Malda district which has 60% minority population the TMC won eight out of the 12 seats.

The TMC regained considerable ground in the tribal dominated districts of Jhargram(4), Bankura (4) and Purulia(3) despite coming second to the BJP which swept these districts in the last Lok Sabha elections.

Mamata’s campaign against the BJP, terming their leaders as “outsiders” trying to impose an alien culture on Bengalis, paid rich dividends for her party. TMC made Bengali pride a key issue in their election campaign.

“This time there was an anti-BJP polarisation which consolidated in favour of the TMC helping the TMC to increase its vote share by 5 percentage points in over two years. This rise in vote share to 43% to 48% helped them win 213 seats,” political observer and author Snigdhendu Bhattacharya told DH.