As Mamata Banerjee takes oath for the office of the Chief Minister for the third consecutive term in West Bengal, she became the second woman in India to do so after Sheila Dikshit. But in comparison, unlike the Congress, the vote share of All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) has increased from about 39 percent in 2011 to close to 48 percent in 2021, official data suggests.
Banerjee is not just making history in West Bengal by becoming the only woman in the State to take charge as the chief minister for the third time but she is also making history as one of the longest-serving woman chief ministers in India. Also, she is the only woman chief minister in the country at the moment.
When Dikshit became the CM of Delhi for the first time in 1998, the vote share of the Congress in the city was 47.76 percent, data from the Election Commission says.
This increased to 48.13 percent as Dikshit repeated the term in 2003. However, by the third time in 2008, the vote share of Congress dropped to 40.31 percent in Delhi, the data says.
Dikshit was the second female chief minister of Delhi. Before her, it was Sushma Swaraj, who took charge of the city from October to December in 1998.
Banerjee became the first woman chief minister of West Bengal in 2011 and there has been no looking back since then. Under her leadership, her party, the AITC, had bagged 38.93 percent of the total votes in 2011.
In her second term in 2016, the party’s vote share increased to 44.91 percent. As she took charge of the State for the third consecutive term, the vote share of AITC has increased to 47.9 percent, data from the Election Commission suggests.
In terms of the overall number of votes received, both Congress and AITC reported an increase. However, the increase in AITC’s votes was double that of Congress.
Under Dikshit’s leadership, Congress got 19.52 lakh votes in 1998. In 2003, this increased to 21.72 lakh votes and by 2008, the votes had reached 24.89 lakh votes, an increase of 27.54 percent since 1998.
However, for AITC, the jump in votes has been close to 55 percent between 2011 and 2021. In 2011, the AITC got 1.85 crore votes. It increased to 2.45 crore votes in 2016. In 2021, this number has reached 2.87 crores, an increase of 54.92 percent since 2011.
The AITC has reported a landslide victory in the 2021 West Bengal Assembly polls as the party won 213 seats. The magic figure in the West Bengal Assembly is 148 and the State has a total of 294 Assembly constituencies.
While J. Jayalalitha (Tamil Nadu) and Mayawati (Uttar Pradesh) had been the chief ministers for four terms each, however, the terms were not consecutive.
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