Mamata Banerjee

Mamata Banerjee (Bengali pronunciation: [ˈmɔmot̪aˑ ˈbɔnd̪ːoˌpad̪ːʱae̯] ; born 5 January 1955) is an Indian politician and lawyer who served as the eighth chief minister of West Bengal from 2011 to 2026. She was the first and only woman to hold that office. She founded the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), and has previously served as a Union Cabinet Minister. She currently is the leader of the Mamata All India Trinamool Congress (MAITC), following the 2026 Trinamool Congress split.

She founded the AITC in 1998 after separating from the Indian National Congress (I), and became its second president later in 2001. She often refers to herself as Didi (meaning, elder sister in Bengali). She made history as the first sitting Chief Minister of India to argue as a lawyer in the Supreme Court. Banerjee previously served twice as Minister of Railways, becoming the first woman to do so. She was 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 Left Front-led government in West Bengal for Special Economic Zones at the cost of agriculturalists and farmers at Singur. 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. She led her party to a landslide victory in the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls.

She served as a 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 state election, though her party won a large majority of seats. 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. She got elected as member of West Bengal Legislative Assembly again from Bhabanipur constituency in the bypoll. Banerjee was fourteenth of the 18 female Indian chief ministers.

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

In 1984, Mamata Banerjee prefixed her name with ‘Dr’, claiming that she had completed her doctorate. After it came to light that the university (University of East Georgia) from which Banerjee had putatively completed her PhD did not exist, she stopped prefixing her name with the ‘Dr’ title.

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 (I) 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, during the Emergency. 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. She retained the Kolkata South seat in the 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2009 general elections. On 16 August 1990, then Youth Congress leader Mamata Banerjee was attacked by CPI(M) cadres while leading a protest rally near Hazra Crossing in Kolkata during a Congress-called bandh over deaths caused by adulterated edible oil, with CPI(M) worker Lalu Alam allegedly striking her on the head and fracturing her skull, later apologising after she came to power in 2011.

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. She was discharged of her portfolios in 1993. In April 1996, she alleged that Congress (I) 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".

In December 1992, Banerjee took a physically challenged girl Dipali Basak, who was allegedly raped by CPI(M) cadre Souvagya Basak, to Writers' 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.

The State Youth Congress led by Mamata Banerjee organised a protest march to Writers' Building in Kolkata on 21 July 1993 against the Left Front government. They demanded that voters' ID cards be made the only required document for voting, to put a stop to CPM's "scientific rigging". Thirteen people were shot and killed by police during the protest and many others were injured. Reacting to this incident the then-Chief Minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, said that the "police had done a good job." During the 2014 inquiry, Justice (retired) Sushanta Chatterjee, former Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court, described the police response as "unprovoked and unconstitutional". "The commission has come to the conclusion that the case is even worse than Jallianwala Bagh massacre," said Justice Chatterjee.

In 1997, due to difference in political views with the then West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president Somendra Nath Mitra, Banerjee left the Congress (I) Party in West Bengal and became one of the founding members of the All India Trinamool Congress, along with Mukul Roy. It quickly became the primary opposition party to the long-standing Left Front government in the state. On 11 December 1998, she controversially held a Samajwadi Party MP, Daroga Prasad Saroj, by the collar and dragged him out of the well of the Lok Sabha to prevent him from protesting against the Women's Reservation Bill.

In 1999, she joined the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and became Railways Minister. In 2000, Banerjee presented her first Railway Budget. In it, she fulfilled many of her promises to her home state West Bengal. She introduced a new biweekly New Delhi-Sealdah Rajdhani Express train and four express trains connecting various parts of West Bengal, namely the Howrah-Purulia Rupasi Bangla Express, the Sealdah-New Jalpaiguri Padatik Express, the Shalimar-Adra Aranyak Express, the Sealdah-Ajmer Ananya Superfast Express, and Sealdah-Amritsar Akal Takht Superfast Express. She also increased the frequency of the Pune-Howrah Azad Hind Express and extended at least three express train services. Work on the Digha-Howrah Express service was also hastened during her brief tenure.

She also focused on developing tourism, enabling the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway section to obtain two additional locomotives and proposing the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited. She also commented that India should play a pivotal role in the Trans-Asian Railway and that rail links between Bangladesh and Nepal would be reintroduced. In all, she introduced 19 new trains for the 2000–2001 fiscal year.

In 2000, she and Ajit Kumar Panja resigned to protest the hike in petroleum prices, and then withdrew their resignations without providing any reasons.

In early 2001, after Tehelka's exposure of Operation West End, Banerjee walked out of the NDA cabinet and allied with the Congress Party for West Bengal's 2001 elections, to protest the corruption charges levelled by the website against senior ministers of the government.

She returned to the NDA government in September 2003 as a cabinet minister without any portfolio. Along with Mamata, her party colleague Sudip Banerjee was also inducted in the Vajpayee ministry. On 9 January 2004 she took charge as Ministry of Coal and Mines. During her short term as the minister of coal and mines, the government disallowed the sale of the National Aluminium Company. She held the Coal and Mines portfolios till 22 May 2004.