Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal election results 2026: India’s fiercest female politician faces a fight for survival

Yet 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. The state, once India’s intellectual and commercial capital, had drifted through decades of industrial decline and political fatigue.