Mamata Banerjee
Mamata Banerjee (Bengali: মমত বন দ য প ধ য য Mômota Bôndyopadhyay; born 5 January 1955 ) is an Indian politician who has been Chief Minister of West Bengal since 2011. She is the first woman to hold the office. Banerjee founded the party All India Trinamool Congress (AITMC or TMC) in 1997 and became its chairperson, after separating from the Indian National Congress. She is often referred to as Didi (meaning elder sister in Bengali). In 2011 Banerjee pulled off a landslide victory for the TMC Congress alliance in West Bengal by defeating the 34-year old Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government, the world's longest-serving democratically-elected communist government. Banerjee previously served as the Minister of Railways twice and is also the first woman Railway Minister of India, Minister of Coal, and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Department of Youth Affairs and Sports and Women and Child Development in the cabinet of the Indian government. She opposed forceful land acquisition for industrialisation by the communist government in West Bengal for Special Economic Zones at the cost of agriculturalists and farmers. In 2012, Time magazine named her one of the "100 Most influential People in the World". In September 2012 Bloomberg Markets magazine listed her among the 50 most influential people in the world of finance. The mercurial TMC leader was voted in May 2013 as India's most honest politician in an internal poll by members of India Against Corruption, India's largest anti-corruption coalition.