Didi Is Done: The Rise, Reign, and Ruin of Mamata Banerjee

Today is a historic day. As votes are counted across West Bengal, the BJP is heading past 190 seats. The TMC is collapsing toward 90. A woman who ruled Bengal for fifteen unbroken years is watching it all slip away — one constituency at a time.

This is the story of Mamata Banerjee. Unsparing. Complete. Long overdue.

The Girl From Kalighat

Mamata Banerjee was born on January 5, 1955, in a lower-middle-class neighbourhood of south Kolkata, to Promileswar Banerjee, a freedom fighter, and Gayatri Devi. When Mamata was 17, her father died from lack of proper medical care — not from illness alone, but from poverty’s cruelty. That wound never healed. Every welfare scheme she later launched for Bengal’s poor traces directly back to that moment.

She completed higher secondary school at Deshbandhu Sishu Sikshalay, earned a BA in History from Jogamaya Devi College, an MA in Islamic History from the University of Calcutta, a B.Ed, and a law degree. Multiple degrees. No silver spoon. And she entered politics at fifteen — while other girls her age were memorising textbooks.

Congress, Fights, and the First Win

Mamata rose through the Congress ranks, becoming General Secretary of Mahila Congress (I) by 1976 at just 21. She built student unions inside college, taking on the Left’s stranglehold head-on. In 1984, she defeated heavyweight CPI(M) barrister Somnath Chatterjee in the Jadavpur constituency — considered a Left fortress — and entered Parliament at 29.

She served as Union Minister across multiple portfolios — Coal, Railways (twice, becoming the first woman to hold that role), Human Resource Development, Women and Child Development. But the Congress in Bengal preferred losing gracefully over fighting. Mamata wanted war.

In 1997, she walked out. In 1998, she founded the All India Trinamool Congress — TMC. “Trinamool” means grassroots. The name was a declaration of intent.

Singur, Nandigram, and the Road to Power

The early TMC years were brutal. They lost badly in 2001 and were routed in 2006. Everyone wrote Mamata off.

Then the Left government tried to seize farmers’ land in Singur for Tata’s Nano plant. Mamata launched a 25-day hunger strike. When Tata eventually relocated to Gujarat, it felt like a decisive personal victory for her. In 2007, Nandigram erupted — the Left sent in police and cadres against farmers opposing an SEZ. People were killed. The footage was damning. Mamata poured herself into the protest and made it the symbol of 34 years of Left arrogance.

By 2011, the dam broke. TMC won 227 seats. Mamata became the first woman Chief Minister of West Bengal, ending three and a half decades of Communist rule. She won again in 2016 with 211 seats. She won a third consecutive supermajority in 2021 despite the full weight of the BJP’s national machinery deployed against her.

Three consecutive supermajorities. Remarkable by any standard.

The Shadow Side

Power is also a mirror.

Genuine achievements: Kanyashree gave daughters bicycles and kept them in school. Swasthya Sathi brought health insurance to families. Lakshmir Bhandar gave women monthly financial support. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation praised Bengal in 2012 for going a full year without a single polio case. Real welfare. Real reach. Real lives changed.

But the same machine that delivered welfare allegedly ran on fear. Post-poll violence after every election — homes burned, opponents beaten, the National Human Rights Commission filing reports, the Supreme Court taking cognisance. The Saradha chit fund scam implicated TMC leaders while ordinary rural families lost their life savings.

In 2024, a trainee doctor was raped and murdered at RG Kar Medical College. Mamata’s government was accused of shielding the accused principal. Months of doctor protests followed — spontaneous, leaderless, impossible to contain. In Sandeshkhali, women came forward accusing TMC strongmen of rape and land-grabbing. Mamata’s response was slow and defensive. It shattered her image among women voters — the very constituency she had built her brand around.

She also quietly dropped the “Dr” prefix from her name after it emerged that the university from which she claimed a doctorate did not exist.

The SIR Bombshell: 91 Lakh Missing Voters

Ahead of the 2026 elections, nearly 91 lakh voters were deleted from West Bengal’s rolls under the Special Intensive Revision exercise, dropping the electorate from 7.6 crore in 2024 to 6.7 crore — a 12 per cent decline.

The BJP backed it fully, arguing it removed illegal Bangladeshi and Myanmarese immigrants inserted into the voter list under Mamata’s watch. The TMC called it a conspiracy to disenfranchise genuine voters, particularly minorities and migrant workers.

The truth is complicated. Heavy deletions did occur in Muslim-majority districts like Murshidabad and Malda, which are TMC strongholds. But in Nadia district, with a larger Hindu population, up to 78 per cent of names in some areas were marked for deletion. One analysis suggests 63 per cent of deleted voters were Hindu versus 34 per cent Muslim. This was not a clean surgical removal. It was a sweeping exercise that hit both sides unevenly — and almost certainly kept millions of real citizens away from the ballot box today.

As for the Bangladeshi infiltration charge: border security is a central subject under the Home Ministry, not the state government. Mamata cannot open or close the border. What she can be held accountable for is whether her administration facilitated documentation of illegal settlers and whether her party absorbed them as voters in border districts. Evidence is anecdotal but documented in specific constituencies. What damages her most is not the present accusation but the past hypocrisy — the same Mamata who raised Parliament adjournment motions against Bangladeshi infiltration in 2006 later became the loudest voice against NRC and CAA. That reversal is hard to explain on principle alone.

How BJP Finally Broke Through

In 2021, BJP won 77 seats in Bengal. In 2024 Lok Sabha, it won 18 out of 42 seats. The trajectory was visible for years. The BJP built a Hindu consolidation narrative around Sandeshkhali, RG Kar, and temple incidents. It deployed Suvendu Adhikari — Mamata’s former trusted lieutenant turned bitter foe — as the face of Bengal BJP. Adhikari knows TMC’s internal machinery better than almost anyone. He defeated Mamata in Nandigram in 2021 and is contesting her again in Bhabanipur today.

Adhikari crossed the majority mark and called the result a product of “Hindu consolidation.” He is the most likely next Chief Minister of West Bengal. His biggest test will be whether he can govern all of Bengal — or only the Bengal that voted for him.

What Happens to Didi Now

Mamata Banerjee will not vanish. She has rebuilt from collapse before. But this is different in scale. The TMC’s patronage machine requires state power to function. Without it, defections will follow, resources will dry up, and the cadre will scatter.

She has spoken of Delhi. She has prime ministerial ambitions. If the BJP stumbles nationally by 2029, Mamata — still the most recognisable regional leader with genuine pan-Indian weight — could position herself at the centre of opposition politics. She has done it before from weaker positions.

More immediately, she will be a fierce opposition leader inside the Bengal assembly. She is at her best when fighting, not governing. Paradoxically, this loss may sharpen her.

The Reckoning

Mamata Banerjee came from nothing. She fought a brutal Left machine with her own body and won. She delivered welfare to people who had been invisible for decades. She did it as an unmarried woman in cotton saris and rubber slippers in one of India’s most unforgiving political arenas.

That is real.

But she also built a machine that corroded the democracy she once fought to protect. She confused loyalty to her person with loyalty to the people. She let the TMC become what the Left was — just wearing a different colour.

The Singur farmer and the Sandeshkhali woman cannot both be her legacy. But they both are.

Bengal opens a new chapter today. Whether it is better than the last one depends entirely on what the BJP builds next — not on what Mamata built, or destroyed.

Didi is not done. She is just starting over. Again.

Nishani writes on geopolitics, economics, technology, and Indian affairs at nishani.in

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