May 5, 2026
I did not lose and hence, will not resign: Mamata Banerjee
In her first press conference since the Election Commission announced the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the winner of the 2026 Assembly election with 207 seats, All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) Chairperson Mamata Banerjee said that Trinamool had not lost the election and hence, she will not resign as chief minister.
She said that the BJP’s win was the result of the looting of votes.
She was accompanied at the press conference, held at her Kalighat residence, by the party’s national general secretary and leader of the party in the Lok Sabha, Abhishek Banerjee, leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha, Derek O’Brien, mayor of Kolkata and one of the winning MLAs, Firhad Hakim, and Lok Sabha MP and eminent Supreme Court advocate, Kalyan Banerjee.
Yesterday, she said that a hundred seats had been stolen from AITC by the Election Commission of India (ECI) by allowing the intentional miscounting of votes using the Central forces.
Today, she accused the poll body of playing “nasty games” by directly interfering in the counting process and said her party’s real rival was the ECI and not the BJP. She also said that it was by the same process that the poll body had ensured the BJP’s win in Maharashtra, Haryana and Bihar.
“This is not how democracy works. When the judiciary is not there, when the Election Commission is biased and the government wants a one-party rule, a wrong message is going to the world,” the 71-year-old party supremo said.
“If Central forces can behave like this. I have nothing to say. I have seen former BJP governments at the Centre. But nothing like this,” she added.
She said several senior INDIA bloc leaders had called her up and were of the same opinion as her regarding the way AITC was made to lose the election.
She also said that her party will form a fact-finding committee comprising five MPs and a few others, which will visit the places where Trinamool supporters and workers are being attacked and party offices being vandalised.
