Mamata Banerjee (Bengali: মমতা বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়, pronounced [mɔːmoːt̪ʰaː bɛːnaːrjiː]; born 5 January 1955)[2] is the 11th and current Chief Minister of West Bengal. She is the first woman to hold the office. Banerjee founded All India Trinamool Congress in 1997 and became chairperson, after separating from the Indian National Congress.[3][4] She is usually called "Didi" (meaning elder sister). She is often cited by the media and critics to be as "megalomaniac, eccentric and populist politician".[5][6][7]
Banerjee pulled off a landslide victory for the All India Trinamul Congress (AITMC ) or (TMC) in West Bengal by defeating the world's longest-serving democratically-elected communist government, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government, bringing to an end 34 years of Left Front rule in the state.[8][9][10] Banerjee previously served as a Minister of Railways twice, Minister of Coal, and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Department of Youth Affairs and Sports and Women and Child Development in the cabinet of the Indian government.[11] She opposed forceful land acquisition for industrialisation by the then communist government in West Bengal for Special Economic Zones at the cost of agriculturalists and farmers.[12]
In 2012, the Time magazine named her one of the "100 Most influential People in the World".[13]
Banerjee was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal to Promileswar Banerjee and Gayetri Devi.[14] She grew up in a lower middle class family, and her father died when she was young. Banerjee became involved with politics while still in school, joining the Congress (I) Party in West Bengal and serving in a variety of positions within the party and in other local political organizations. As a young woman in the 1970s, she quickly rose in the ranks[clarification needed] to become the general secretary of the state Mohila Congress (1976–80).[12] She was a college student in the mid-1970s when politics in Bengal began to accommodate the riffraff[clarification needed].
Banerjee graduated with an honours degree in History from the Jogamaya Devi College, an undergraduate women's college in southern Kolkata.[15][16] Later she earned a master's degree in Islamic History from the University of Calcutta. This was followed by a degree in education from the Shri Shikshayatan College. She also earned a law degree from the Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri Law College, Kolkata.[17]
Throughout her political life Banerjee has maintained an austere lifestyle, always dressing in simple traditional Bengali cotton sarees called 'taat', while wearing none of cosmetics or jewellery and always has a cotton bag slung on her shoulder. She has remained single throughout her life.[18][19]
Banerjee started her political career in the Congress party, and as a young woman in the 1970s, she quickly rose in the ranks of the local Congress group, and remained the General Secretary of Mahila Congress (I), West Bengal, from 1976 to 1980.[20] In the 1984 general election, Banerjee became one of India's youngest parliamentarians ever, beating veteran Communist politician Somnath Chatterjee, from the Jadavpur parliamentary Constituency in West Bengal. She also became the General-Secretary of the All India Youth Congress. Losing her seat in 1989 in an anti-Congress wave, she was back in 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.[21]
In the Rao government formed in 1991, Mamata Banerjee was made the Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development, Youth Affairs and Sports, and Women and Child Development. As the sports minister, she announced that she would resign, and protested in a rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata, against Government's indifference towards her proposal to improve sports in the country.[22] She was discharged of her portfolios in 1993. In April 1996, she alleged that Congress was behaving as a stooge of the CPI-M in West Bengal. She claimed that she was the lone voice of reason and wanted a "clean Congress". At a private rally at Alipore in Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee wrapped a black shawl around her neck and threatened to make a noose with it.[23] In July 1996, she squatted at the well of Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian parliament, to protest a hike in petroleum price, although she was a part of the government that instituted it. In that very time she grasped the collar of Amar Singh, MP of Samajwadi Party, in the well of the parliament. In February 1997, on the day of railway budget presentation in Lok Sabha, Mamata Banerjee threw her shawl at the railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan for ignoring West Bengal and announced her resignation. The speaker, P. A. Sangma, did not accept her resignation and asked her to apologise. Later she came back when Santosh Mohan Deb mediated.
In 1997, Mamata Banerjee left the Congress Party in West Bengal and established the All India Trinamool Congress. It quickly became the primary opposition party to the long-standing Communist government in the state.[why?] 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.[24]
In 1999, she joined the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and was allocated the Railways Ministry.[21]
In 2000, Mamata Banerjee presented her first Railway Budget. In it she fulfilled many of her promises to her home state West Bengal.[25] 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, Sealdah-New Jalpaiguri Express, Shalimar-Bankura Arannyak Express and the Sealdah-Amritsar Superfast Express (weekly).[25] She also increased the frequency of the Pune-Howrah Azad Hind Express and extension of at least three express train services. Work on the Digha-Howrah Express service was also hastened during her brief tenure.[26]
She also focused on developing tourism, enabling the Darjeeling-Himalayan section with 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.[26]
In 2000, she and Ajit Kumar Panja resigned from the cabinet to protest the hike in petroleum prices,[27] and then withdrew their resignations without any reason.[28]
In early 2001, after the Tehelka expose,[29] Banerjee walked out of the NDA cabinet and allied with the Congress Party for West Bengal's 2001 elections, amidst speculation that the move could unseat the Communist government.
She returned to the NDA government in January 2004, and holding the Coal and Mines portfolio till the Indian general election, 20 May 200404 elections, in which she was the only Trinamool Congress member to win a Parliament seat from West Bengal.[21]
On 20 October 2005, she protested against the forceful land acquisition and the atrocities[clarification needed] on local farmers in the name of industrial development policy of the Buddhadev Bhattacharya government in West Bengal. Benny Santoso, CEO of the Indonesia-based Salim Group had pledged a large investment to West Bengal, and the West Bengal government had given him farmland in Howrah, sparking protest. In soaking rain, Banerjee and other Trinamool Congress members stood in front of the Taj Hotel where Santoso had arrived, shut out by the police. Later, she and her supporters followed Santoso's convoy. A planned "black flag" protest was avoided, when the government had Santoso arrive three hours ahead of schedule.[30][31]
Mamata Banerjee suffered further setbacks in 2005, when her party lost control of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the sitting mayor defected from her party. In 2006, the Trinamool Congress was defeated in West Bengal's Assembly Elections, losing more than half of its sitting members.
On 4 August 2006, Banerjee hurled her resignation papers at the deputy speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal in Lok Sabha. The provocation was the speaker (Somnath Catterjee)'s rejection of her adjournment motion on illegal infiltration by Bangladeshis in West Bengal. The motion was turned down by the speaker on the ground that it was not in the proper format.[32][33]
In November 2006, Banerjee was forcibly stopped on her way to Singur for a rally against a proposed Tata Motors car project. Mamata reached the West Bengal assembly and protested at the venue. She addressed a press conference at the assembly and announced a 12-hour shutdown by her party on Friday.[34] The Trinamul Congress MLAs[clarification needed] protested by damaging furniture and microphones in the West Bengal Assembly.[34][35] A major strike was called on 14 December 2006.
Before the 2009 parliamentary elections she forged an alliance with the UPA[clarification needed]. The alliance won 26 seats. Banerjee joined the central cabinet as the railway minister (second tenure). In the 2010 Municipal Elections in West Bengal, TMC won Kolkata Municipal Corporation in a margin of 62 seats. TMC also won Bidhan Nagar Corporation in 16-9 seats margin. In 2011, Banerjee won a sweeping majority and assumed the position of chief minister of the state of West Bengal. Her party ended the 34-year rule.[clarification needed]
The Nandigram violence was an incident in Nandigram, West Bengal where, on the orders of the Left Front government, more than 4,000 heavily-armed police stormed the rural area in the district of Purba Medinipur with the aim of stamping out protests against the West Bengal government’s plans to expropriate 10,000 acres (40 km2) of land for a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to be developed by the Indonesian-based Salim Group. The police shot dead at least 14 villagers and wounded 70 more.
The SEZ controversy started when the government of West Bengal decided that the Salim Group of Indonesia[36][37][38] would set up a chemical hub under the SEZ policy at Nandigram. The villagers took over the administration of the area, and all the roads to the villages were cut off. A front-page story in the Kolkata newspaper, The Telegraph, on 4 January 2007 was headlined, "False alarm sparks clash". According to the newspaper that village council meeting at which the alleged land seizure was to be announced was actually a meeting to declare Nandigram a "clean village", that is, a village in which all the households had access to toilet facilities. The administration was directed to break the Maoist-backed Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee's (BUPC) resistance at Nandigram and a massive operation with at least 3,000 policemen along with armed cadre of the Marxist ruling party was launched on 14 March 2007. However, prior information of the impending action had leaked out to the BUPC who amassed a crowd of roughly 2,000 villagers at the entry points into Nandigram with women and children forming the front ranks. In the resulting mayhem, at least 14 people were killed.[39] Many people of the lower classes were made homeless due to this political carnage.[40] A large number of intellectuals protested on the streets and this incident gave birth of a new hope for movement to ouster the left from government headed by the CPI(M)[clarification needed].[41][42][43] Mamata Banerjee wrote letters to the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil to stop the violence promoted by CPI(M) in Nandigram. Agitation in Nandigram subsided, after the state government shelved the proposed chemical hub project.
Trinamool Congress performed well in the 2009 parliamentary election, bagging 19 MP seats, among them 5 women (including Banerjee), reiterating its faith in the Women's Reservation Bill[clarification needed]. Its allies in congress and SUCI also got six and one MP seats respectively marking the best performance by any opposition party in West Bengal since the start of the left regime. Until then, the Congress victory of 16 seats in 1984, by the sympathy vote after the death of Indira Gandhi, was considered the best show of opposition.
In 2009, Mamata Banerjee became the railway minister for the second time. Her focus was again on West Bengal.[44] She neglected her duties as a railway minister to concentrate on electioneering in West Bengal.[45]
She led Indian Railways to introduce a number of non-stop Duronto Express trains connecting large cities[46] besides a number of other passenger trains,[47] including women-only trains.[48] [49][50] The Anantnag-Qadigund railway line of the Kashmir railway that has been in the making since 1994[51] was inaugurated during her tenure.[52] She also declared the 25-km long line-1 of Kolkata Metro as an independent Zone of the Indian Railways[53] for which she was criticized.[54]
Reuters reported that "Her two-year record as railway minister has been heavily criticized for running the network into more debt to pay for populist measures such as more passenger trains."[55] The Indian Railways became loss-making in her two-year tenure.[56] Even before stepping down as railway minister to become the Chief Minister of West Bengal, she declared that she would be able to handle both the portfolios together.[57] Her nominee Dinesh Trivedi from her party succeeded her as railway minister.
On 14 March 2012, Dinesh Trivedi announced the annual rail budget 2012 that included an all over hike in passenger fares, ranging from 2 paise to 30 paise per kilometre for reasons of safety, along with network expansion and associated modernisations. The rail fare had not been hiked for nearly a decade [58] putting Indian Railways in ICU as far as its financial viability was concerned. The proposed fare hike would have added 4200 crores to railways income, which while paltry compared to its expenses, would still have saved railways from becoming bankrupt. The budget received enthusiastic support from a wide cross section of society including the general public,[59] industry groups[60][61][62] and all five Rail Unions.[63][64] However, the fare hike proposal in the budget was fiercely opposed by Mamata Banerjee. Although Trivedi initially tried to defend the budget by pointing out that it was necessary for making Indian Railways stronger, Mamata Banerjee forced him to resign as Railway Minister on 18 March 2012.[65][66]
On hearing of the incident, noted Indian woman entrepreneur and Chairman & MD of Biocon, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw tweeted that "Mamta is a dangerous, populist demagogue: economically illiterate but politically astute - deadly combo!". She added that "Mamta is a sad reflection on just how feudal our society and culture is - talk of human rights!" and "Mamata is behaving like a mad despot. Political leadership is in deficit with such irrational behaviour that can only harm the poor."[67] Industrialist Rahul Bajaj opined that ""It was a very bold budget and he is a brave man to take such a tough call of increasing fares after ten years. I would have wished to see him around as the Railways Minister. However, it is very unfortunate that his own party is now distancing him."[67] Veteran journalist, Vivian Fernandes reported that, "It is getting clearer by the day that Mamata Banerjee's poribortan is not a change for the better. Like the communists, she can only tear, not build." [68] Trinamool MP Kabir Suman came out in open support for Trivedi and expressed his solidarity with him, saying “My respects for the Chief Minister and other party leaders notwithstanding, I must say that it defies parliamentary decorum to get a Railway Minister removed simply because he has acted in the country’s interest.” [69]
Mamata defended herself by saying that the entire Trivedi incident was Congress's "gameplan".[69] However, Mamata received support for her actions from the Left, her main opposition, who said "Mamata has every right to ask for a rollback".[70]
Ambikesh Mahapatra, a professor of Jadavpur University was assaulted, then arrested and forced to spend a night in police custody for allegedly circulating 'defamatory' cartoons of Mamata Banerjee. While Prof. Mahapatra, as the victim of the assault was forced to spend a night in police station, his attackers - Amit Sardar, Arup Mukherjee, Sheikh Mustafa and Nishikanta Gharai – allegedly Trinamool Congress activists of the New Garia area on the southern fringes of Kolkata, were arrested on the next day and they were released on bail after being produced before the court.[71] Mamata Banerjee defended the professor's arrest.[72][73]
Mamata Banerjee stormed out off the stage in a huff during an interactive programme organised by CNN-IBN TV channel on Friday 18 May 2012 at the Kolkata Town Hall, Kolkata without answering questions from audience (which consisted a large number of students). Mamata alleged that the students were Maoist cadres. Moments after walking off the stage,the Chief Minister instructed the police to take photographs of those in the audience who had asked questions.“The students are only asking Maoist questions and the CPI(M) questions,” she complained as the programme moderator sought her answer to the issues raised. “They are the Maoist students."[74]
Some publications, in their editorials characterized Mamata Banerjee as "Dictatorial"[75] and her rule as "Mamata's growing dictatorship",[76][77] citing her forcing Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi's resignation, and the professor Ambikesh Mahapatra cartoon incident, as examples of this tendency.
The All India Trinamool Congress along with SUCI[citation needed] and the Indian National Congress won the legislative assembly election against the incumbent Left Alliance by securing 227 seats. TMC won 184 seats with the INC winning 42 seats and the SUCI secured one seat. This marked the end of the longest ruling democratically elected Communist party in the world.
Mamata Banerjee at Milan Mela ground after inauguration of the 'Infocom 2011' an IT fair in Kolkata.
Banerjee was sworn in as Chief Minister of West Bengal on 20 May 2011. As the first woman Chief Minister of West Bengal, one of her first decisions was to return 400 acres of land to Singur farmers. "The cabinet has decided to return 400 acres to unwilling farmers in Singur," the chief minister said. "I have instructed the department to prepare the papers for this. If Tatababu wants, he can set up his factory on the remaining 600 acres, otherwise we will see how to go about it," she added.[78]
She has also been credited to solving the longstanding "Gorkhaland Problem"[clarification needed] by setting up the Gorkhaland Autonomous Council.[79]
She has started various reforms in education and health sectors. Some of the reforms in the education sectors include release of the monthly pay of the teachers on the first of every month[80][81] and quicker pensions for retiring teachers.[82] In health sector "A three-phase developmental system will be taken up to improve the heath infrastructure and service,” Mamata Banerjee said."[83]
In fact she was instrumental in the rollback of the petrol price hikes [84] and the suspension of FDI in Retail Sector until a consensus is evolved.[85] In a bid of improve the law and enforcement situation in West Bengal, Police commissionerates were created at Howrah, Barrackpore, Durgapur-Asansol and Bidhannagar. The total area of Kolkata Municipal Corporation has been brought under the control of Kolkata Police.
Even before assuming the role of Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee had shown keen interest in making the public aware of the state's history and culture. She had named several stations of the Kolkata Metro after freedom fighters,[86] and plans on naming upcoming stations after religious leaders, poets, singers and the like.[87] One of her unprecedented moves as Chief Minister has been to arrange for the playing of Rabindra Sangeet at traffic signals in Kolkata.[88]
On 16 February 2012, Bill Gates, of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, sent a letter to the West Bengal government praising Mamata Banerjee and her administration for achieving a full year without any reported cases of polio. The letter said this was not only a milestone for India but also for the whole world.[89][90]
Mamata Banerjee's Tenure as railway minister is now being questioned as most of the big-ticket announcements made by her last year when she was the railway minister, have seen little or no progress.[91]
The state of West Bengal set up a grand felicitation involving Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee and Governor of West Bengal M K Narayanan after the KKR won the IPL 2012 championship throphy .[92] The Cricket Association of Bengal gifted the 17 members of the team with gold chain each and mementos.[92] A victory parade for the team members was also organized on 28th May beginning from Hazra , Writers Building to the Eden Garden stadium where ten thousand spectators came to cheer for the team during a one-hour celebration that was compared to the India's World Cup victory lap at the Wankhede in Mumbai the year before. [92] However, the celebration received criticim from media and certain political parties and has been ridiculed by some pols of society as it had only been organised for a club team.[92] Shahrukh Khan, the team's co-owner and the state's brand ambassador, defended the move and stated: "There is no harm in being happy and sharing happiness. Nobody should criticise it. It's alright to be happy. Let's not be political. It has been done because we all are happy. There is nothing wrong if we bring a bit of happiness to the city of joy."[92]There were about Lakhs of people waited in the Eden Gardens Stadium to be a part of this joy and happiness accross the city of Kolkata.
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- Official
- Other
| Persondata |
| Name |
Banerjee, Mamata |
| Alternative names |
|
| Short description |
Indian politician, 11th Chief Minister of West Bengal |
| Date of birth |
5 January 1955 |
| Place of birth |
Kolkata, West Bengal, India |
| Date of death |
|
| Place of death |
|
