Mamata Banerjee

Who is Mamata Banerjee?

Mamata Banerjee is an Indian politician who has been Chief Minister of West Bengal since 2011. She is the first woman to hold the office. Banerjee founded the party All India Trinamool Congress in 1997 and became its chairperson, after separating from the Indian National Congress. She is often referred to as Didi. In 2011 Banerjee pulled off a landslide victory for the TMC Congress alliance in West Bengal by defeating the 34-year old Communist Party of India-led Left Front government, until then the world's longest-serving democratically-elected communist government.

Banerjee previously served as the Minister of Railways twice and is also the first woman Railway Minister of India, 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. 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.