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Mamata Banerjee came to power in West Bengal in 2011, ending 35 years of Communist rule in the state. Banerjee is the founder of the Trinamool Congress — which she set up in 1998 after falling out with the Congress Party. Colloquially known as ‘Didi’, Banerjee's followers hail her as a champion of India's poor and dispossessed.
She vehemently opposed the Left Front government’s controversial policy of building Special Economic Zones in rural areas — a cause that won her much admiration in a state where large parts of the voters still earn their living from the land.
In 1984, she became one of India's youngest ever MPs, defeating veteran communist leader Somnath Chatterjee. She lost her seat in the 1989 polls, only to bounce back in the 1991 election to become Minister of State for Sports and Youth Affairs in the P V Narasimha Rao government. She became Union Railways Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance government in 1999.
Tata Motors had to abandon the small car factory plans in Singur due to political opposition by Banerjee and a section of the farmers over land acquired by the company in 2008.
In 2012, she formally withdrew support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh refused to roll back the reform measures he had announced earlier.
