List of chief ministers of West Bengal
The chief minister of West Bengal is the chief executive of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. The chief minister is the head of the executive branch of the government of West Bengal and is charged with enforcing state laws. Following elections to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, the state's governor usually invites the party (or coalition) with a majority of seats to form the government. The governor appoints the chief minister, whose council of ministers are collectively responsible to the assembly. Given the confidence of the assembly, the chief minister 's term is for five years and is subject to no term limits. In August 7 1947, the British Indian province of Bengal was partitioned into the Pakistani province of East Bengal and the Indian state of West Bengal. Since then West Bengal has had eight chief ministers, starting with Prafulla Chandra Ghosh of the Indian National Congress (INC) party as the premier. A period of political instability followed—West Bengal witnessed three elections, four coalition governments and three stints of President's rule between 1967 and 1972—before Siddhartha Shankar Ray of the INC served a five-year term . The landslide victory of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front in the 1977 election began Jyoti Basu's 23-year continuous reign as chief minister. The length of his tenure was an all-India record until 2018, when he was surpassed by Sikkim's Pawan Kumar Chamling. Basu's successor Buddhadeb Bhattacharya continued Communist rule in West Bengal for another decade, when the Left Front was defeated in the 2011 election by the All India Trinamool Congress. Sworn in on 20 May 2011, Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee is West Bengal's incumbent chief minister, the first woman to  hold the office. She was subsequently voted to power in 2016 and 2021 assembly elections.Mamata Banerjee's TMC got a landslide win in 2021 assembly elections, securing 215 assembly seats out of 292.