Kolkata:
Mamata Banerjee had refused to resign as chief minister in a show of defiance after the BJP swept the West Bengal elections. A move online now indicates that she has finally conceded.
The Trinamool chief has updated her bio on X to reflect that she was the chief minister in three previous terms.
“Founder Chairperson All India Trinamool Congress. Chief Minister of West Bengal (15th, 16th and 17th Vidhan Sabha),” the new bio read.
Earlier, it read: “Founder Chairperson All India Trinamool Congress. Honourable Chief Minister, West Bengal”.
The change coincides with the BJP’s swearing-in ceremony in Bengal on Saturday. Suvendu Adhikari, who defeated Banerjee from Bhabanipur in the last month’s assembly elections, took oath as the BJP’s first chief minister in Bengal.
Mamata Banerjee, whose TMC could only get 80 of the state’s 294 seats, on Tuesday alleged that the West Bengal assembly poll verdict was “not a people’s mandate but a conspiracy” and refused to resign as chief minister.
She alleged large-scale irregularities in counting, claiming nearly 100 seats were “looted” and that the pace of counting was deliberately slowed to sap her party’s morale.
“Why should I step down? We have not lost. The mandate has been looted. Where does the question of resignation arise?” she told reporters.
“The question of my resignation does not arise, as we were defeated not by a public mandate but by a conspiracy…I did not lose; I will not go to Lok Bhavan,” the 71-year-old leader said.
The BJP, which on Monday sealed a landslide victory with 207 seats in the 294-member assembly, ending Mamata Banerjee’s uninterrupted 15-year rule, called her stand “anarchic” and against India’s democratic traditions.
