What the election verdict means for Mamata Banerjee

Didi emerges as a formidable regional leader

There is little doubt that the star of this round of state elections is West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee. The only woman chief minister in India at the moment, Banerjee has also become the only leader who has now fought all three major national political streams — she first fought the Left for decades, ousting it from power in 2011; she fought the Bharatiya Janata Party, defeating its well oiled machinery in 2021; and she fought the Congress and walked out in the 1990s.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee will emerge from this assembly elections as one of India’s most powerful regional leaders (ANI Photo)

Banerjee will emerge from this assembly elections as one of India’s most powerful regional leaders and a possible glue for unity, especially among all the non-Congress and non-BJP political forces.

But a new, and more formidable, challenge begins now, with West Bengal witnessing a steady spike in Covid cases and deaths during the unrelenting second wave of the pandemic.