Political career with Congress (I) Banerjee began her political career in the
Congress (I) party as a young woman in the 1970s. In 1975 she gained attention in the
press media when she danced on the car of socialist activist and politician
Jayaprakash Narayan as a protest against him, during the Emergency. She quickly rose in the ranks of the local Congress group and remained the general secretary of
Mahila Congress (Indira), West Bengal, from 1976 to 1980. In the
1984 general election, Banerjee became one of India's youngest parliamentarians ever, defeating veteran Communist politician
Somnath Chatterjee, to win the
Jadavpur parliamentary Constituency in West Bengal. She also became the general secretary of the
Indian Youth Congress in 1984. She lost her seat to
Malini Bhattacharya of the
Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the
1989 general elections in an anti-Congress wave. She was re-elected in the
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. Banerjee was appointed the
Union Minister of State for
Human Resources Development,
Youth Affairs and Sports, and
Women and Child Development in 1991 by
prime minister,
P. V. Narasimha Rao. As the sports minister, she announced that she would resign and protested in a rally at the
Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata, against the Government's indifference towards her proposal to improve sports in the country. She was discharged of her portfolios in 1993. In April 1996, she alleged that Congress (I) was behaving as a stooge of the CPI-M in West Bengal. She said that she was the lone voice of reason and wanted a "clean Congress". In December 1992, Banerjee took a physically challenged girl Dipali Basak, who was allegedly raped by CPI(M) cadre Souvagya Basak, to
Writers' Building to the then Chief Minister
Jyoti Basu but was harassed by the police before being arrested and put on detention. She had sworn she would enter the building again only as chief minister. The State Youth Congress led by Mamata Banerjee organised a protest march to Writers' Building in Kolkata on 21 July 1993 against the Left Front government. They demanded that voters' ID cards be made the only required document for voting, to put a stop to CPM's "scientific rigging".
Thirteen people were shot and killed by police during the protest and many others were injured. Reacting to this incident the then-Chief Minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, said that the "police had done a good job." During the 2014 inquiry, Justice (retired) Sushanta Chatterjee, former Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court, described the police response as "unprovoked and unconstitutional". "The commission has come to the conclusion that the case is even worse than
Jallianwala Bagh massacre," said Justice Chatterjee. It quickly became the primary opposition party to the long-standing Left Front government in the state. 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.
Railway Minister (first tenure), 1999–2000 In 1999, she joined the
BJP-led
National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and became Railways Minister. 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, the Sealdah-
New Jalpaiguri Padatik Express, the
Shalimar-
Adra Aranyak Express, the Sealdah-Ajmer Ananya Superfast Express, and Sealdah-Amritsar Akal Takht Superfast Express. She also focused on developing tourism, enabling the
Darjeeling Himalayan Railway section to obtain 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. and then withdrew their resignations without providing any reasons.
2001 West Bengal election In early 2001, after
Tehelka exposure of
Operation West End, Banerjee walked out of the NDA cabinet and allied with the Congress Party for West Bengal's 2001 elections, to protest the corruption charges levelled by the website against senior ministers of the government.
Minister of Coal and Mines, January 2004 – May 2004 She returned to the
NDA government in September 2003 as a cabinet minister without any portfolio. Along with Mamata, her party colleague Sudip Banerjee was also inducted in the Vajpayee ministry. On 9 January 2004 she took charge as Ministry of Coal and Mines. During her short term as the minister of coal and mines, the government disallowed the sale of the
National Aluminium Company. She held the
Coal and
Mines portfolios till 22 May 2004.
2004–2006 election setbacks In Indian general election of 2004 her party aligned with the Bharatiya Janata Party. However, the alliance lost the election and she was the only Trinamool Congress member to be elected from a parliamentary seat from West Bengal. Banerjee suffered further setbacks in 2005 when her party lost control of the
Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the sitting mayor
Subrata Mukherjee 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. She was provoked by
Speaker Somnath Chatterjee's rejection of her adjournment motion on illegal infiltration by
Bangladeshis in West Bengal on the grounds that it was not in the proper format.
Singur, Nandigram and other movements On 20 October 2005, she protested against the forceful land acquisition and the atrocities perpetrated against local farmers in the name of the
industrial development policy of the
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government in West Bengal. Benny Santoso,
CEO of the
Indonesia-based Salim Group, had pledged a large investment in West Bengal, and the
West Bengal government had given him farmland in Howrah, sparking protests. 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. After being arrested by police earlier in that day "for violating prohibitory orders" near Singur, she alleged that the administration had acted "unconstitutionally" by preventing her from entering Singur where the Tata motors proposed to set up a small car factory. She was intercepted at Hooghly and sent back. After this incident the Trinamool Congress MLAs protested by damaging furniture and microphones and vandalising the West Bengal Legislative Assembly Building. A major strike was called on 14 December 2006. But all in all there was no gain. On 4 December, Banerjee began the historic 26-day hunger strike in Kolkata protesting the forcible acquisition of farmland by the government. The then-President
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, who was concerned about her health, spoke to the then-Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh to resolve the issue. Kalam also appealed to Banerjee to withdraw her fast as "life is precious". A letter from Manmohan Singh was faxed to
Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the then-Governor of West Bengal, and then it was immediately delivered to Mamata. After receiving the letter Mamata finally broke her fast at midnight on 29 December. In 2016 the
Supreme Court declared that the acquisition of 997 acres of land by West Bengal's Left Front government for the Tata Motors plant in Singur was illegal.
Nandigram protest In 2007 a battalion of armed police stormed the rural area of
Nandigram in the district of
Purba Medinipur with the aim of quashing protests against the West Bengal government's plans to expropriate of land for a
Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to be developed by the Indonesian-based
Salim Group. At least 14 villagers were shot dead and 70 more were wounded. This led to a large number of intellectuals to protest on the streets. CPI(M) cadres allegedly molested and raped 300 women and girls during the Nandigram invasions. Banerjee wrote letters to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister
Shivraj Patil to stop what she called "state-sponsored violence" promoted by CPI(M) in Nandigram. Her political activism during the movement is widely believed to be one of the contributing causes to her landslide victory in
2011. The CBI report on the incident vindicated CPI(M)'s stand that Buddhadeb did not order the police to open fire. They did so only to disperse the unlawful assembly after every other standard operating procedure had failed. But supporting the violence in Nandigram by his own party workers, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had said earlier "They (the oppositions) have been paid back in the same coin." There are allegations of involvement of some local TMC leaders in the Nandigram Violence.
2009–2011 electoral progress Before the 2009 parliamentary elections she allied with the
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by Indian National Congress. 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 by a margin of 62 seats. TMC also won Bidhan Nagar Corporation by a seven-seat 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 of the Left Front. Trinamool Congress performed well in the 2009 parliamentary election, winning 19 seats. Its allies in Congress and SUCI also won six and one seats respectively marking the best performance by any opposition party in West Bengal since the beginning of the Left's regime. Until then, the Congress victory of 16 seats in 1984, was considered their best show in opposition.
Railway Minister (second tenure), 2009–2011 In 2009, Mamata Banerjee became the railway minister for the second time. Her focus was again on West Bengal. She led
Indian Railways to introduce a number of non-stop
Duronto Express trains connecting large cities as well as a number of other passenger trains, including women-only trains. The Anantnag-Qadigund segment of the
Jammu–Baramulla line that had been in the making since 1994 was inaugurated during her tenure. She also declared the long line-1 of the
Kolkata Metro as an independent
zone of the Indian Railways for which she was criticised. She stepped down as
railway minister to become the
chief minister of West Bengal. She commented: "The way I am leaving the railways behind, it will run well. Don't worry, my successor will get all my support." Her nominee from her party,
Dinesh Trivedi, succeeded her as railway minister. Banerjee's tenure as railway minister was subsequently questioned as most of the big-ticket announcements made by her when she held the post, saw little or no progress. 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." The Indian Railways became loss-making during her two-year tenure. == Chief Minister of West Bengal (2011–present) ==