NEW DELHI: Just days after refusing to step down following the Trinamool Congress’ crushing defeat in the West Bengal Assembly elections, Mamata Banerjee appears to have quietly acknowledged the end of her government.The West Bengal chief minister’s bio on X now describes her as “Founder Chairperson All India Trinamool Congress. Chief Minister of West Bengal (15th, 16th and 17th Vidhan Sabha).” The earlier version of bio read: “Founder Chairperson All India Trinamool Congress. Honourable Chief Minister, West Bengal.”This comes less than a week after Mamata had insisted she would not resign despite the BJP’s sweeping victory in the state.“I won’t resign. Let them dismiss me,” Banerjee said while urging party workers to observe a “black day” during the first sitting of the new Assembly. She also asked TMC legislators to wear black clothes inside the House as a mark of protest.Banerjee had alleged large-scale electoral malpractice and accused the BJP, Election Commission, CRPF and sections of the police administration of targeting her party during the polls. “This was not an election but an atrocity,” she had said, while also claiming that more than 1,500 TMC offices had been “hijacked”.The TMC later said the Kalighat meeting was aimed at preparing the party for its role in the opposition benches and reaffirmed that it would continue to fight “BJP’s tyranny and oppression tooth and nail”.On Saturday, Suvendu Adhikari was sworn in as the state’s first BJP chief minister since Independence. Governor RN Ravi administered the oath at a grand ceremony in Kolkata attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and senior BJP leaders.Adhikari’s rise marks a symbolic reversal in Bengal politics. Once one of Banerjee’s closest lieutenants and a key architect of the 2007 Nandigram movement that helped end Left Front rule, he later defected to the BJP in 2020 amid growing tensions with the TMC leadership. In the 2026 Assembly elections, he defeated the TMC in both Nandigram and Bhabanipur, while the BJP secured 207 seats to end the party’s 15-year rule in the state.
