Mamata Banerjee has lost her bastion. The Trinamool Congress (TMC), the party she built, has been decimated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in one of the fiercest electoral battles ever in West Bengal.
The BJP is poised to form its first government in the state since Independence, having crossed the 200-seat mark in the 294-member Assembly, effectively ending Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year rule.
The TMC, by contrast, has been reduced to around 80 seats, a steep fall from the 215 it secured in the 2021 elections. It’s another matter that Mamata Banerjee is yet to concede defeat and has cast doubt on the results and the Election Commission of India.
The firebrand leader’s defeat to the BJP virtually ended her bid for a fourth consecutive term as chief minister – something that India’s regional stalwarts such as Jyoti Basu and Naveen Patnaik achieved before her.
Mamata Banerjee has not just lost power. She has also lost her election to her seat in Bhabanipur, South Kolkata. Losing the seat to her former aide-turned-arch rival, Suvendu Adhikari, makes it even worse. This means that Mamata is not even an Assembly member in West Bengal.
This is not the first time she has lost her seat. In 2021, Banerjee lost the Nandigram contest to Adhikari. But her party had returned to power, allowing her to re-enter the Assembly through a bypoll from Bhabanipur. This time, however, the situation is starkly different from 2021. Her party has lost elections.
TMC’s loss to BJP leaves Mamata Banerjee’s political career uncertain. What’s next for her?
Despite an undercurrent of discontent against her, as evidenced by this week’s election results, Mamata Banerjee remains by far the most popular leader Bengal has seen since the heyday of Jyoti Basu, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) stalwart who governed the state from 1977 to 2000. While her next steps remain to be seen, political analysts say she cannot be completely written off.
“She may be down, but she remains the fiercest street fighter in Indian politics. You cannot write her off easily,” Deep Haldar, a senior journalist and author based in Kolkata, says.
From street protests to CM
Mamata Banerjee shot to fame for the first time in 1984 when she defeated the veteran communist Somnath Chatterjee to win the Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat. In 1998, she broke away from the West Bengal Congress to set up her own party—a ‘Trinamool’ or grassroots Congress.
Years later, in 2011, she defeated the Communist Party of India (Marxist) after 34 uninterrupted years in power, overturning a political order that had come to define West Bengal itself.
Between 1998 and 2011, Mamata Banerjee had already carved an image of a street fighter through her agitations in Singur and Nandigram. In 2011, when her party swept assembly polls, The New York Times called her “the blunt instrument knocking down their own Berlin Wall“.
“Didi means Big Sister, but Mamata Banerjee is hardly big, at least in size. She is barely five feet, dressed in a simple cotton sari and plastic sandals. Yet, as she stepped out of her tiny house, Didi began barking orders that sent her covey of male aides into a solicitous tizzy. It was time to wage her political insurgency,” reads the first para of her NYT profile in January 2011.
Mamata’s TMC swept the 2016 and 2021 assembly elections. Even in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the TMC won 29 of the 42 seats in West Bengal. This was 7 more than it won in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Those who followed her rise say Mamata Banerjee kept winning in West Bengal until 2026, driven by a mix of political strategy, welfare delivery, and opposition weakness.
“This time, BJP proved too tough for her,” Haldar says
For now, within the TMC, Mamata Banerjee’s authority remains strong. Unless there’s a dramatic internal revolt, she will continue to lead the party. She would obviously be keeping a watch on the cadre.
“TMC is not a party driven by ideology. Most of the people in TMC were there because the party was in power. As the party has lost, the important challenge is to keep the flock together,” says Sayantan Ghosh, author of Battleground Bengal.
‘I can fight anywhere. So I will be on the streets’
Returning to national politics seems difficult for Mamata because TMC’s clout in the INDIA bloc has already diminished after an abysmal performance in state elections. Unless, if she wants to chose the Rajya Sabha route.
“What if she goes to Delhi and becomes a face of opposition for all her experience and image of being a street fighter. You don’t need to be a member of any house for that. She is still the TMC chief. The opposition is anyway desperately looking for a face to take on the BJP at the centre on the streets,” Haldar told LiveMint.
But a 71-year-old leader taking to the streets may not be feasible. The next Lok Sabha election is still three years away.
Mamata Banerjee might want to enter the assembly through a bypoll as she did in 2021 and take on the BJP government in West Bengal as an opposition leader.
I’m a free bird, a commoner now. I don’t have a chair anymore.
At the post-result press conference in Kolkata on 5 May, she hinted at reclaiming that role. “I’m a free bird, a commoner now. I don’t have a chair anymore,” she told reporters in Kolkata on 5 May.
“I can be anywhere, I can fight anywhere. So I will be on the streets,” she said.
Key Takeaways
- Mamata Banerjee’s defeat marks a significant shift in West Bengal’s political landscape.
- The TMC’s loss raises questions about Banerjee’s future and the party’s unity.
- Despite setbacks, Banerjee’s resilience and past achievements suggest she may not be finished in politics.
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