Mamata Banerjee

          Mamata Banerjee, 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 Indian Trinamool Congress in 1997 and became its chairperson, after separating from the Indian National Congress. She is often referred to as Didi.
 
       


         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. In 2012, Time Magazine named her one of the " 100 most influential people in the world".

       
             Banerjee was born in Calcutta , in a Bengali Brahmin's family to Promileswar Banerjee and Gayetri Devi. She grow up in a lower-middle class family. Her father died when she was 17. In 1970, she completed the higher secondary examination. Banerjee graduated with an honours degree in History from the Jogamaya Devi college, a graduate women's college in southern Kolkata. Later she earned a master's degree in Islamic history from the university of Calcutta. This was followed by a degree in education from the Shri Shikshayatan college. She also earned a law college,Kolkata. She was honoured DLitt from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology. Banerjee is a self-taught painter and a poet.

     
   Banerjee became involved with politics when she was only 15.While studying at the Jogamaya Devi college established "Chhatra Parishad Unions" the student"s wing of the congress party, defeating the Democratic Students Union of the Socialist Unity Centre of India. As a young woman in the 1970s, she quickly rose through the ranks to become the general secretary of the state Mahila Congress.
                                                                                                                          - SANGAVI