Mamata: from street fighter to mass leader
Kolkata: Mamata Banerjee, popularly known as 'Didi' to all her followers, has acquired the reputation of having relentlessly fought the Left Front regime in West Bengal for close to three decades, and the journey hasn't been easy.
Daughter of a freedom fighter, Mamata entered politics in the 1970s when she joined the student wing of the Congress party while studying in Kolkata. But her big moment in politics came in 1984, when she defeated veteran CPI-M leader Somnath Chatterjee from the Jadavpore Lok Sabha seat. Later, her tremendous mass appeal saw her register six-straight victories from Kolkata South. Mamata first entered the corridors of power in 1991 as a junior minister in the PV Narasimha Rao government.
After spending over 20 years in the Congress, she snapped ties with the party in 1998, accusing it of diluting its opposition to the CPI-M and formed her own party the Trinamool Congress.
Known for her flip-flops and mercurial nature, Mamata's single-minded determination to defeat the Marxists, first saw her ally with the BJP-led NDA in 1998, then with the Congress just ahead of the 2001 state elections and finally again with the NDA in 2004. However all these tie-ups were seen as opportunistic and did not pay off.
The electoral reverses continued and in 2005, Trinamool lost control of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and a year later faced a crushing defeat in the Assembly elections, with more than half of TMC sitting members losing.
But despite these major setbacks, Mamata refused to give up and her big opportunity came when Nandigram and Singur exploded on the national scene. Read more....
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