Mamata Banerjee

Mamata Banerjee will take oath as the chief minister of West Bengal for the third time on May 5, TMC leader Partha Chatterjee announced on Monday, reports The Times of India.

The newly-elected MLAs of the Trinamool Congress unanimously elected Banerjee as the legislative party leader at a meeting in New Delhi, he said.

Mamata Banerjee led her party to one of its biggest political victories, pocketing 213 of the 292 assembly seats that went to polls and secured a third straight term in office.

BJP, bagged 77 seats, while the ISF, which contested with the symbol of the Rashtriya Secular Majlis Party, and an Independent, managed one seat each.

TMC supremo, however, lost by 1,956 votes in to former aid and BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari.

Mamata Banerjee alleged that the officer-in charge of Nandigram feared for his life and so he did not give a recounting order adding that she will move court against the Nandigram verdict.

Thousands of TMC supporters took to the streets, despite a virus-related ban on celebrations, reports AFP.

In a victory speech later Sunday, Mamata Banerjee said West Bengal’s ‘immediate challenge is to combat the Covid-19 and we are confident that we will win’.

‘This victory has saved the humanity, the people of India. It’s the victory of India,’ Banerjee, a fierce critic of prime minister Narendra Modi, added.

Modi tweeted his congratulations but added that his party had grown its support in the state ‘from a negligible presence earlier’.

Despite the defeat in West Bengal, there was a silver lining for the BJP ‘in the sense that it has now established itself as the principal opposition to the TMC,’ political strategist Amitabh Tiwari told AFP.