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A storm of change in West Bengal: Mamata

Staff Reporter

She dedicates victory to State’s Maa, Mati and Manush

— PHOTO: ARUNANGSU ROY CHOWDHURY

Trinamool Congress supporters in a joyous mood at the residence of their leader Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata on Saturday after the party’s good performance in the Lok Sabha elections.

KOLKATA: “A storm of change has taken over West Bengal. A new history has been written today. This is a 100 per cent performance,” Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee said on Saturday after her party, in alliance with the Congress, won a majority of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the State.

Addressing journalists here, a visibly tired Ms. Banerjee dedicated the win to the “State’s Maa (mother), Mati (earth) and Manush (people).”

The Trinamool leader said: “The result is evidence of people’s no-confidence in the Left Front and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The State government has been reduced to a political minority due to this mandate.”

Supporters jubilant

Earlier, jubilant leaders and supporters of the party trooped into her residence as news of the Trinamool’s win started coming in. They shouted victory slogans, beat drums, danced, blew conchs and applied vermilion on one another.

Even inmates of the Alipore Central Jail, located across the canal that flows by Ms. Banerjee’s residence, cheered her from the balconies and windows of the prison.

Asked whether the win in the Lok Sabha elections was an indication of early Assembly elections (otherwise due in 2011), she said the party would discuss that question only after a government was formed at the Centre.

“At present, we want a stable government at the Centre, and development and progress in the State which have been pushed backward by the Left for the past 32 years … People will not forgive the Leftists for what they have done.”

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