*Mamata Banerjee’s contribution to the national politics*
Mamata Banerjee climbed up the stairs of fame with her famous Singur hunger strike.
She initiated a 25 days strike at Singur protesting against the forceful land acquisition. A manufacturing unit for manufacturing of small cars was supposed to set up at Singur by Tata.
This created a great ripple effect. The controversy attracted the politicians, media, activists.
Mamata Banerjee got the much needed limelight during this controversy. Infact this proved to be her come back in mainstream politics.She got more followers and supporters.
Mamata Banerjee is a well known name in Indian politics. She is the supremo of AITC( All India Trinamool Congress) .
Banerjee started her political journey back in 1970’s with Congress party.
During her initial days she served as General Secretary of State Mahila Congress.
She became one of the youngest parliamentarians in 1984 after beating veteran CPI leader Somnath Chatterjee Lok Sabha.
Her life is like a chess board sometimes white sometimes black symbolising victory and defeat.
Mamata Banerjee lost from Jadavpur in the year 1989, but she returned to Lok Sabha again in 1991 by opting for a change. She changed her constituency to South Kolkata. Thus she won.
After this victory she was made Union Minister for State for HRD, Youth affairs and sports and Women and Child Development.
Apart from that she had handled the portfolios like coal and mines and railways.
During her first tenure as railway minister she presented her first railway budget where she introduced lots of new trains from West Bengal. Around 19 trains were introduced during her first tenure i.e. the fiscal year of 2000-2001. She later walked out of NDA cabinet but again joined back the cabinet ministry without any portfolio. 2004 seemed to be fruitful for Mamata Banerjee as she managed to get back into cabinets with ministry of coal and mines. During the election of 2004 her party formed an alliance with BJP. It did not proved enough worthy as the alliance could not win. Coming years Mamata Banerjee saw some setbacks . Later her party got defeated.
In the year 2009 she allied with UPA just before the parliamentary election.
In municipal elections TMC won by 62 seats.In 2011 she saw a huge victory by whooping number of 227 votes. She sworn in as first women CM of West Bengal. With this victory she uprooted the ruling party of west Bengal who had a tenure of serving for 34 year. She came up with different schemes for students, home makers, teachers and old pension holders. One of her schemes Lakshmir bhandar got quite popular and was massive hit amongst people.
In 2012 she was ranked among the top 100 most influential people of the world by time magazine. In the same year Bill Gates of Bill and Melinda Gates foundation wrote a letter to Mamata Banerjee appreciating her efforts.
In 2016 again Banerjee won and history was repeated in 2021…
Payal Das
Kolkata Correspondent
World of Mohan
