FROM DIDI TO DURGA

Mamata Banerjee’s victory holds out hope not just for Bengal but for opposition forces across the country looking to halt the relentless march of the saffron brigade

- Romita Datta

IT was dusk on May 2 by the time news came that Mamata Banerjee had created history yet again. With a hat-trick of victories, and having secured more than 200 seats for the second time, her party, the All-India Trinamool Congress (TMC), had surpassed all expectations. The enduring image of this election will be of the wheelchair-bound Mamata, a wounded tigress who fought alone against the entire might of the BJP, including the prime minister. Anti-incumbency, allegations of corruption and minority appeasement, sexist taunts…Mamata braved them all, and in the end, her party was the only one left standing, winning 213 of the 292 seats (elections to two seats have been deferred). By bringing the relentless BJP juggernaut to a halt, her status in Bengal has been upgraded from Didi to that of a Durga. Mamata has exposed the claims of the Modi-Shah duo’s reputed invincibility as a mere boast and emerged as the great big hope of opposition forces across the country.

Congratulations poured in almost immediately, and not just from Opposition leaders. Congress president Sonia Gandhi called her up, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar hailed the TMC’s win as a “stupendous victory”, while the Shiv Sena lauded the “Tigress of Bengal”. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was gracious, tweeting his congratulations while defense minister Rajnath Singh sent her “wishes for her next tenure”. It’s a different matter that the camaraderie dissolved soon after, as post-poll violence between TMC and BJP workers resulted in a number of deaths, leading the BJP to boycott Mamata’s swearing-in. West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, ever the provocateur, chided the newly sworn-in Mamata and asked her to “rise above partisan interests...script a new governance pattern”.