Mamata Banerjee, an Indian politician

OV Digital Desk
4 Min Read
Mamata Banerjee

Mamata Banerjee (5 January 1955) was an Indian politician, bureaucrat, and the first female chief minister of West Bengal.

Early Life

Mamata Banerjee was born on 5 January 1955 West Bengal, India. In 1970, she completed her Higher Education from Deshbandhu Sishu Sikshalay. Later, she received a bachelor’s degree in History from Jogamaya Devi College. Later, she received a master’s degree in Islamic History from the University of Kolkata.

At the age of 15, she got involved in politics. Her involvement with the West Bengal Republicans and the Congress Party continued while she studied at Jogamaya Devi College. She defeated the All-India Democratic Students Organization affiliated with the Socialist Unity Centre of India. As a young woman in the 1970s, Banerjee joined the Congress party. A protest against Jayaprakash Narayan in 1975 got her some press co when she danced on his car.

Banerjee was first elected to the lower house of parliament in 1984 when she was a member of the House of Representatives in the south Kolkata district. She lost her seat in the 1989 parliamentary election, but she won it back in 1991, and she kept it through every election until 2009.

She became minister of state for human resource development, youth affairs, sports, and children and women’s issues by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao in 1991.

As a sport minister, she announced to quit and protested against the government for failing to look at her proposal to improve sports in the country at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata.

In 1997, she left the Congress Party in West Bengal, after differing political views with Somendra Nath Mitra, and became a founding member of the All-India Trinamool Congress. After being founded, it quickly became the main opposition party to the long-term Communist government in the state. On 11 December 1998, she controversially dragged a Samajwadi Party MP out of the Lok Sabha well after holding him by the collar to stop him from protesting against the Women’s Reservation Bill.

The All-India Trinamool Congress, Socialist Unity Centre of India, and Indian National Congress took 227 seats from the incumbent Left Alliance in the 2011 West Bengal assembly elections. TMC won 184 seats, INC won 42 seats, and SUCI got one. On 20 May 2011 she took office as West Bengal’s chief minister. As the first female chief minister of West Bengal.

It was a landslide victory for the All-India Trinamool Congress in the 2016 assembly elections, as Mamata Banerjee won 211 out of 293 seats. This is her second term as Chief Minister of West Bengal.

She held a number of administrative positions in parliament, both inside the party and at the national level, including three cabinet-level posts: rail, coal, and mines.

She also wrote a lot in English and Bengali, along with being active in politics. She wrote a lot of nonfiction, like Struggle for Existence (1998) and The Slaughter of Democracy (2006), and some poetry, too.

Read More; 4 January in Indian and World History.

Share This Article