Mamata Banerjee was sworn in as the 11th ? and first woman ? chief minister of West Bengal on Friday, riding a huge mandate with her alliance, Trinamool Congress-Congress, winning 227 of the 294 seats in the assembly. Apart from her, 37 members ? 35 from TMC and two from Congress ? took oath to be part of 56-year-old Mamata’s A Team in the government.

Among the prominent ? and expected ? names were Amit Mitra, former Ficci secretary-general and who has helped Mamata draw up a blueprint to revive Bengal, and Mamata loyalists like Partha Chatterjee (leader of the Opposition for years), Subrata Bakshi, Subrata Mukherjee (former mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation and one credited with initiating Mamata to the Congress), Bobby Hakim, Madan Mitra. She also inducted almost all the giant killers like Manish Gupta, former chief secretary who defeated outgoing chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya at Jadavpur, academic Rabiranjan Chattapadhyay who ousted industry minister in the LF government and one of the chief architects of the Tata factory at Singur, Nirupam Sen, actor Bratya Basu who defeated housing minister and rising CPM star Gautam Deb, and Mitra, of course, who showed the door to finance minister Asim Dasgupta.

The list also included three former IPS officers — at least two of whom had worked under Jyoti Basu ? Upendranath Biswas, Hyder Aziz Safwi and Rachpal Singh; a retired judge Noor Alam Choudhury and former Naxal leader Purnendu Bose who is also a trade union expert. In her team are many leaders from the districts and industrial towns like Moloy Ghatak (Asansol), Rabindranath Bhattacharjee (Singur), Santaram Mahato (Purulia). She kept her promise of including people from all sections by also including Sukumar Hansda who took his oath in Santhali, a first. Interestingly, the pro-Tata face in the Trinamool, Sadhan Pande, also took oath today — he had met Ratan Tata at the height of the Singur movement and was sidelined for months.

The Congress was supposed to swear in six members, but could provide names of only two, including state Congress chief Manas Bhuiya. According to sources, there’s infighting in the party about who should get the berths ? though Pranab Mukherjee’s son is not a contender ? and it reportedly also wants eight in all, not seven as promised by Mamata.

?I will work day and night for the next seven days,and won’t take a holiday,? Mamata Banerjee said as she left her Kalighat home to take the oath. People came out in hordes to wish her, causing a near stampede at Raj Bhavan and also at Writers’ Buildings where she prepared to chair her first Cabinet meeting. She promised to meet governor M K Narayanan once a week to keep him abreast of the developments in the state ? a clear departure from the Left leaders who often had to be summoned by the governor for talks. Outgoing chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Left Front chairman Biman Basu and Asim Dasgupta attended the swearing-in ? a departure from the TMC and Mamata who boycotted the last two times Buddhadeb became chief minister, in 2001 and 2006. In the audience were Union ministers Pranab Mukherjee and P Chidambaram, Sam Pitroda and a host of city intellectuals, bureaucrats and industrialists. Just before entering Writers’ as journalists threw questions at her, she said the state is on the brink of bankruptcy, the situation dismal and that the new government will have to work very hard. Her task is cut out, as, to give just one example, the new government is staring at a debt of Rs 2 lakh crore and more in unpaid dues ? a gift from the exiting Left.