Humbled Mamta remembers I.N.D.I.A |
The white cotton-saree clad simple looking diminutive woman briskly walking in her trademark white hawai-chappals led the newly found Trinamool Congress to new heights before this fall with a thud.
Who could have even dreamt of plotting the downfall of the Left-citadel anchored by the indomitable comrade Jyoti Basu who remained chief minister of West Bengal for a record period? There was none to challenge.
She did literally achieve what was perceived to be an impossible task. The Left’s fortress had fallen and Ms Banerjee rose like a colossal. And dominated West Bengal politics for over a decade till the debacle of 2026 assembly election came.
Keeping aside the controversies surrounding the poll-process for the moment, she was beaten at her own game - defeating the Left - by the new emerging power in state, the Bharatiya Janata Party. The latter fully trudged on the communal contours rising on the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists by the Election Commission of India.
Once a stormy petrel, Mamta was defanged by none other than a political party, BJP, with which she had once been in alliance and became the railway minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee dispensation. There is no doubt that her aligning with the saffron party at that juncture opened a window for the BJP in West Bengal for the first........