UPDATED: May 10, 2021 09:40 IST
Hattrick CM Mamata during the election campaign, at a rally in Jalpaiguri
IT was dusk on May 2 by the time news came that Mamata Banerjee had created history yet again. With a hat-trick of victories, and having secured more than 200 seats for the second time, her party, the All-India Trinamool Congress (TMC), had surpassed all expectations. The enduring image of this election will be of the wheelchair-bound Mamata, a wounded tigress who fought alone against the entire might of the BJP, including the prime minister. Anti-incumbency, allegations of corruption and minority appeasement, sexist tauntsMamata braved them all, and in the end her party was the only one left standing, winning 213 of the 292 seats (elections to two seats have been deferred). By bringing the relentless BJP juggernaut to a halt, her status in Bengal has been upgraded from Didi to that of a Durga. Mamata has exposed the claims of the Modi-Shah duo’s reputed invincibility as a me
KOLKATA: It was an election with many firsts for Mamata Banerjee. In a career spanning almost four decades, she had never contested a seat outside south Kolkata much less against an estranged aide who jumped ship a few months prior to the polls. A spate of further poll-eve defections posed another unfamiliar challenge. A much-discussed leg injury just when the bid for a third term appeared in need of a leg-up ensured that Mamata, known to always walk the extra mile, spent almost the entire 50-day campaign in a wheelchair.
Not all of what she had to contend with was unexpected. For Mamata, who began her electoral journey with a Lok Sabha win in 1984, the 2019 general elections that saw BJP wresting 18 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in her citadel marked the start of a new political curve. Instead of the Left Front and Congress, her primary opponent in the 2021 race for Bengal was now BJP, which was eager to build on its gains in 121 assembly segments.
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