Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee took oath as Chief Minister of West Bengal for the third time on Wednesday, 5 May, at the Raj Bhavan in Kolkata.
The TMC, led by Banerjee, won 213 seats in the 294-member West Bengal Assembly. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came in at second place in the elections with 77 seats.
Banerjee is presently the only woman Chief Minister in the country, and is also the only woman Chief Minister to be elected three times in a row.
Will Deal With COVID & Violence on Priority: Mamata
The ceremony was a small one due to the pandemic, with COVID-19 protocols in place.
The guest list for the oath-taking ceremony, which was delivered by Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, included senior TMC leaders like Abhishek Banerjee, Subrata Mukherjee, Subrata Bakshi, Partha Chatterjee, Aroop Biswas, Shatabdi Ray, amongst others.
That apart, former cricketer Sourav Ganguly, former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, and West Bengal Congress Chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury were also invited. Bhattacharya gave the event a miss due to ill health. Ganguly and Chowdhury were also not seen at the event.
Poll strategist, Prashant Kishor, who steered the TMC to victory as campaign strategist, was also present at the event.
Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh was also invited, but stayed away from the event as protest against the "political violence unleashed by the TMC" after the election results.
"I thank the Maa, Maati, Manush family. A lot of people across the world were looking at Bengal elections with hope, I thank them too. Our first priority will be COVID-19 management. Secondly, I'd ask all political parties to maintain peace and harmony. Bengal does not like violence. Please take care that nothing goes wrong anywhere. I'm taking up law and order from today and will deal with this strongly," said Banerjee after taking the oath.
The Chief Minister then headed to the state secretariat, Nabanna, where she was given the guard of honour. Speaking to the press at the secretariat, Banerjee alleged that the violence was being caused by the BJP.
“I have noticed that violence and clashes are taking place in those areas where the BJP have won the elections. These places can be seen as black spots,” she said.
“The law and order in West Bengal deteriorated in the last three months. There were some sporadic incidents and not all were real, most were fake. BJP is showing old videos,” she claimed.
Hours after taking oath as the Chief Minister, Banerjee held a top-level meeting with senior officials of the state government, including Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay and Home Secretary HK Dwidevi on the present law and order situation.
She said that all the district magistrates and SPs were asked to strictly deal with any emerging situation.
“If someone is found involved in any incident, we will deal with it very strictly. We are not going to tolerate any lawlessness here,” Banerjee said.
The state government also reinstated Virender, who is about to retire at the end of this month, as the Director General of Police and Jawed Shamim as the ADG (Law and Order), the Chief Minister said.
‘Hope CM Will Take All Steps To Restore Rule of Law’: Governor Dhankhar
Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, who referred to Banerjee as "younger sister" while speaking after the oath, asked her to look at law and order "urgently".
"I congratulate Mamata ji on her third term. Our priority is that we must bring to an end to this senseless violence that has affected society at large. I have every hope that the CM on an urgent basis will take all steps to restore rule of law," said Dhankhar.
The Governor had tweeted yesterday to say that the Prime Minister had called him to express anguish over the political violence ensuing in West Bengal since the election results were declared on 2 May.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narednra Modi himself took to Twitter to congratulate Banerjee after she took oath.
(With inputs from PTI)
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