Bengal polls: Mamata Banerjee has lost only 1 election till date

The electorate of West Bengal will decide the fate of their chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, on Saturday (April 30) when her constituency Bhabanipur will go to polls in the sixth and penultimate phase of this year's Assembly election. [Know your leader: Mamata Banerjee]

The contest between Banerjee, the chief of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), and Deepa Dasmunsi, a veteran Congress leader and a former MP and Chandra Kumar Bose, the grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose who has been fielded in this election by the BJP, will be the biggest draw of this phase. [List of 53 seats going to polls on April 30]

Here, we take a look at the past electoral battles that Mamata Banerjee have fought since 1984, the first time she contested an election and won. [Top contests: Mamata vs Deepa vs Chandra Bose]

As a 29-year-old, Banerjee made a stormy entry into the national politics by defeating heavyweight CPI(M) leader and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha---Somnath Chatterjee---in the Lok Sabha election held that year. [In Roopa Ganguly, BJP has found a 'rich man's Mamata']

Mamata contested Assembly poll first time in 2011

Banerjee has mostly fought Lok Sabha elections during her long political career. It was only in 2011 that she contested her first Assembly election after her party won a massive mandate and ended the Left's 34-year-long monopoly in Bengal's politics. By then, Banerjee had already fought seven general elections, winning all but one. [Mamata has no CPI(M) rival this time]

1984 (won): Mamata Banerjee defeated CPI(M)'s Somnath Chatterjee from Jadavpur constituency in South Kolkata by 19,660 votes. Contesting as a Congress candidate, she bagged 49.8 per cent of votes and registered a victory in what has been the Congress's best performance in a Lok Sabha election till date.

1989 (lost): Contradictory to the previous result, Banerjee lost this election to the CPI(M)'s Malini Bhattacharya in the same Jadavpur constituency by 30,900 votes with a vote-share of 46 per cent. This has been the only loss Banerjee has suffered in an election till date, thanks to the strong anti-incumbency against the Bofors scam-tainted Rajiv Gandhi government.

1991 (won): Banerjee returned as the Congress MP after defeating CPI(M)'s Biplab Dasgupta by 93,663 votes in Calcutta South (now Kolkata Dakshin) constituency. Her vote-share that year was 51.5 per cent.

1996 (won): Banerjee registered her third Lok Sabha election victory against the CPI(M)'s Bharati Mukherjee in Calcutta South seat by 1,03,261 votes. This was the first time that Banerjee got a victory by over a lakh votes. Her vote-share was 51.4 per cent. This was also the last election that Banerjee contested as a Congress candidate.

1998 (won): Banerjee tasted the first victory as a candidate of her newly floated West Bengal Trinamool Congress in the Lok Sabha election held this year. She defeated the CPI(M)'s Prasanta Sur by 2.24 lakh votes, the biggest victory margin she has registered till date. Her vote-share was 57.4 per cent.

1999 (won): In her second win as a TMC (this time All India Trinamool Congress) candidate, Mamata Banerjee defeated the CPI(M)'s Subhankar Chakraborty by 2.14 lakh votes [vote-share of 58.3 per cent].

2004 (won): Banerjee became the only TMC leader to win the Lok Sabha election of that year when she defeated the CPI(M)'s Rabin Deb by 98,429 votes in Calcutta South seat. Her vote-share was 51.1 per cent. She had told later how cornered she felt as the only MP from her party in Parliament. Actor Nafisa Ali had contested against her on the Congress's ticket but finished third.

2009 (won): Banerjee last victory in a Lok Sabha election came in 2009 when she defeated the Rabin Deb again in Kolkata Dakshin constituency by 2.19 lakh votes (her biggest victory till date). Her vote-share was also an impressive 57.1 per cent, the highest in all her general election victories. Also unlike in 2004, Banerjee's party won 18 other seats from the state, multiplying its power by 19 times.

2011 (won): Mamata Banerjee fought her first Assembly election in 2011, a few months after the TMC won a massive majority to topple the Left Front from power after a gap of 34 years. She contested from Bhabanipur, the same seat she is contesting this time, and defeated the CPI(M)'s Nalini Mukherjee by over 54,000 votes. Her vote-share was a staggering 77.46 per cent. Banerjee, who took oath as the chief minister of Bengal in May that year, completed the formalities with this win.