“A storm of change has swept Bengal this time,” Mamata said. “The people have lost confidence in the Left Front government in Bengal. We will ask the Government at the Centre to conduct Assembly polls as early as possible. This government has become a minority and the Left has become redundant in national politics.” Mamata herself won by a margin of over 2.21 lakh votes, highest among opposition winners.

Emerging as the Congress’s largest partner, Mamata got congratulatory calls from both Sonia Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee. According to sources, the Trinamool may get three Cabinet berths, including at least one Cabinet-rank post certain to be bagged by Mamata. The Trinamool chief, who is expected to come to Delhi early next week, is reportedly also keen to get at least one of her two minority MPs a ministerial post.

It was in the ’70s that Mamata first launched her struggle against the CPI(M) as a small worker in the Congress (I). In 1984, she gave the first hints of what she was capable of when she was elected as an MP from Jadavpur defeating Somnath Chatterjee.

Clad in her usual modest white sari and chappals, a delighted Mamata claimed that had the elections been “free and fair in the first phase”, they would have won all the 42 seats.

“People wanted an end to 32 years of CPI(M)’s oppression and terror. History was made today. Even during and after the elections so many of my party colleagues died. Our struggle against the CPI(M) will continue,” she added.

Mamata thanked the people of Nandigram and Singur, where for the last three years she has been engaged in an unrelenting agitation against the state Government, and the minorities, and Scheduled Castes and Tribes.

She vowed to work for development of Bengal with agriculture and industry coinciding peacefully. “People voted against the CPI(M)’s policy of grabbing land in the name of industrilisation and bogus development. Our prime agenda is the development of Bengal with the right balance between agriculture and industry,” she said.

She said her motto ‘Ma, Mati and Munush (Mother, land and people)’ was ultimately accepted by the people of Bengal.

(with inputs from Delhi)