Around 35 days ago, Mamata Banerjee walked 14km through the streets of Kolkata in her final election march for Bhabanipur constituency. Security officials scrambled to manage the crowd of ministers, MLAs, MPs, candidates, and film industry figures jostling for proximity to her. That energy felt familiar, an echo of the street fighter who had built Trinamool Congress from a fragile splinter of Congress into a force that ended three decades of Left Front rule in 2011.

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