Mamata Banerjee hogs limelight in West Bengal
The love-hate relationship between Congress and Trinamool Congress finally ended with Mamata Banerjee walking out of the UPA and Congress pulling out its ministers from the West Bengal government in 2012, which saw the chief minister going through some tough times be it for her controversial remarks, Opposition attacks, rumblings within her own party or the cartoon controversy.
Banerjee, however, scored a point when she was named among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
The UPA government's renewed thrust on reforms led to Mamata leaving the coalition after less than three and half years. In a veritable tit-for-tat, Congress pulled out its six ministers from the West Bengal government.
The alliance at the national level broke up over the issues of FDI in multi-brand retail, cap on subsidised LPG cylinders and diesel price rise. Mamata promised that she would fight "like a tiger cub" against "anti-people policies" and analysts say in her opposition to UPA's reform programmes, she sought to prove more left than the Left.
Mamata, who has been complaining of lack of funds to battle the huge debt burden over over Rs 2 lakh crore which she says was left behind by the previous coalition, finds herself more and more at the receiving end facing one controversy after another.
Her government faced severe criticism on several fronts, including a controversial government order on newspapers that government-run libraries were allowed to keep and over the arrest of a professor for forwarding a cartoon by email showing her in poor
