Mamata Banerjee will be sworn in as the chief minister of West Bengal for the third time on 5 May, her party announced on Monday.

The newly-elected MLAs of the Trinamul Congress unanimously elected Banerjee as the legislative party leader at a meeting here, its secretary-general Partha Chatterjee said.

The TMC legislators elected the speaker in the outgoing House, Biman Banerjee, as the pro-tem speaker in the new Assembly.

“The newly-elected members will take oath in the Assembly from 6 May,” Chatterjee told reporters at the party headquarters here after the meeting of the legislators.

Miss Banerjee today declared that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the oath-taking ceremony would be a low-key affair in keeping with Covid protocols.

She also said her party would arrange a grand celebration after the pandemic is over and would organise the meeting at Brigade Parade ground where other chief ministers and Opposition leaders of different states would be invited.

Mentioning that all the national leaders, including Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik, Punjab CM Amarinder Singh, Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Akhilesh Yadav called her to congratulate her on the electoral success, Banerjee said, “There is a lot of time to think on this. This is a time when we should fight Covid and I am only focused on that. The Prime Minister didn’t call me. That doesn’t matter though. He might be busy, but he had called me before.”

“At the same time, I would like to remind the BJP that what it is doing is not correct. One of the supporters has been killed in East Burdwan. They are torturing our supporters in Cooch Behar,” she said, adding, “I also want to tell the police that some of them have worked in favour of the BJP. But this is the time when we should work together to save people from Covid.”

TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee met West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar at Raj Bhavan today evening and tendered her resignation as chief minister of the present government staking claim to form the government.

Party’s secretary-general Partha Chatterjee and Trinamul Youth Congress president Abhishek Banerjee accompanied her to Raj Bhavan.