Hemant Abhishek
Mamata Banerjee ended the uninterrupted 34-year-long reign of the Left in West Bengal, but can she be the first woman prime minister 29 years after Indira Gandhi is the big question.
The 59-year-old cotton sari and chappal-clad firebrand politician was a giant killer right from the onset of her political career. While fighting on a Congress ticket in the 1984 general election ticket she became one of India`s youngest parliamentarians ever by beating veteran Communist politician Somnath Chatterjee from the Jadavpur parliamentary Constituency in West Bengal. She was made the Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development, Youth Affairs and Sports, and Women and Child Development in the PV Narasimha Rao government in 1991. She first showed glimpses of her temperament when she announced that she would resign as the sports minister and launched a protest rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata. She was soon discharged of her portfolios.
Disillusioned with the Congress, she formed the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in 1997 and in 1999 became the rail minister in the BJP-led NDA government. She walked out of the the alliance in 2001, only to rejoin it in 2004. She then held the coal and mines portfolio until the General Elections that year when she allied with the Congress. In those elections her party was relegated to just one seat won by her. But TMC`s biggest moment was arguably the West Bengal Assembly Election of 2011 when she scripted the unthinkable by dismissing the CPI-M-led Left government off its perch.
But `didi` is not someone who rests on past laurels. Her career graph has risen from strength-to-strength and one would easily understand why union minister and chief minister`s post no longer holds the charm for her. She`s been there and done that.
In case of a fractured mandate if the TMC can improve on its 2009 tally of 20 seats then Mamata will fancy her chances of helming together a coalition under TMC`s aegis. No reason why she can`t do it. Her party has fared well even in the last panchayat elections, bagging approximately 44% votes. She even at one point had the backing Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare and Shahi Imam of Delhi`s Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari. And she has gone all out fielding high-profile candidates like footballers Bhaichung Bhutia and Prasun Banerjee, film personalities Moon Moon Sen, Dev, Satabdi Roy, Soumitra Roy and Tapas Pal—so she doesn`t lack the star power either.
Hence there is no reason why she can`t conquer the final frontier. Or, is there?
Her temperament has in the past gotten the better of her. In 1998, she held a Samajwadi Party MP Daroga Prasad Saroj and dragged him out of the Lok Sabha well for protesting against the Women`s Reservation Bill and resigned as a minister in NDA government only to withdraw it without any reason. In 2006, she hurled her resignation papers at Lok Sabha deputy speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal and in 2012 forced Dinesh Trivedi, her party`s railways minister in Central cabinet, to step down after he hiked passenger fares.
The Bengal tigress it seems will only have to make a clean sweep in Bengal if she plans to make Delhi her den.
