Battling it alone, Mamata decimates Left-Congress opposition

KOLKATA: Mamata Banerjee is Bengal’s undisputed queen. She has won the biggest political battle in her career, and ensured the state says green. The challenge was significantly more than the assembly polls of 2011, when there was a distinct anti-Left wave. This time, there was not only an unprecedented Left-Congress alliance but also a series of corruption charges against her party. Yet, she won. In 2013, Trinamool leaders were accused in the Saradha scam, the biggest in the state’s history. Then just before the polls came the Narada sting that highlighted how 13 of prominent Trinamool faces, MLAs, ministers, MPs, accepted cash as bribes. Just four days before the first phase, the Vivekananda flyover in Kolkata collapsed killing 27. But nothing could sully her image or that of her party. She darted across the state addressing over 150 public meetings. She was never on the defensive, claiming a deep political conspiracy. Instead, she focused on the government’s pro-rural and propeople schemes. The politics of welfare and distribution paid dividends. For the Left, the news could not have been worse. The party which enjoyed uninterrupted hegemony over Bengal for 35 years is now relegated to the third position. The Congress benefited from the alliance to come second, but the big story is the emergence of the BJP as the new force. As early leads showed TMC candidates winning one after another, party workers and supporters poured in the Kalighat home of Banerjee. Green ‘gulal’ never got an opportunity to settle down from the air outside her residence.