Banerjee staged a 26-day long hunger strike in Kolkata in 2006 protesting against the forcible land acquisition by the state government in Singur, and later travelled to the rural pocket and laid siege on the factory for 14 days last year.

After the Singur movement, followed by a similar agitation in Nandigram, the land acquisition agitation snowballed into a major issue in the state and brought handsome rewards to the Trinamool at the hustings.