Mamata takes oath Friday
After singlehandedly demolishing 34 years' rule of Left Front and leading her party Trinamool Congress to power in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee will be installed as the first woman chief minister of the state on May 20.
"The new government will be sworn on Friday [May 20]. Friday is a good day as it is the 'Jumma' day and it is also the Shiva's day", Mamata told reporters after a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Party Chief Sonia Gandhi.
Banerjee, who reached Delhi last night, had a meeting with Gandhi at her 10, Janpath residence where she was given a warm welcome.
Sonia came out and threw her arm round the back of Mamata and escorted inside her house.
"I have invited Soniaji for the oath ceremony to be held in Kolkata. She will let me know," Mamata told reporters after the meeting.
She said she also invited the PM but he had told her that he would not be able to attend the ceremony.
To a question on whether Congress men will inducted into her ministry though her party has gained majority on its own, she said, "I have invited the Congress and another ally Socialist Unity Centre of India to join the government and they will let me know."
Meanwhile, Sonia held consultations with senior party colleagues on the issue of her party's participation in the next West Bengal government.
Gandhi held talks with her political secretary Ahmed Patel and senior leader Shakeel Ahmed who is in charge of party affairs for West Bengal.
The meeting came a day after Shakeel Ahmed and Pranab Mukherjee ascertained the views of newly-elected Congress legislators in West Bengal amidst indications that majority of them favour sharing power with Trinamool Congress in the state.
Mamata, a member of Indian parliament and India's railway minister, did not contest the recent assembly elections in West Bengal and she has to get elected to the state assembly within six months, as per the constitution, reports AFP.
Her Trinamool Congress Party already sits in the national ruling coalition dominated by Congress, but her victory in West Bengal's state elections will give her more prominence.
She looks likely to emerge as a more potent but unpredictable force in New Delhi politics, analysts add.
"In the exercise of power, they (India's women leaders) let ruthless efficiency trump any expectation of genteel compassion... unleashing fury that even hell does not contain," commented the Economic Times newspaper.
Firebrand Mamata Banerjee last week demolished 34 years of communist rule in West Bengal, India's fourth most populous state -- prompting the Indian Express newspaper to shout in a headline: "Bengal makes herstory".
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