Is Mamata Banerjee's decision to support United Progressive Alliance's presidential candidate Pranab Mukherjee going to change the dynamics of opposition politics in West Bengal? Both Congress and Communist Party of India Marxist rule out that possibility and insist that instead the heat would be more and more on the ruling Trinamool Congress in the coming days.
On March 30, West Bengal will elect five new members to Rajya Sabha. The ruling Trinamool Congress with its 185 members of Legislative Assembly in the state legislative assembly is in a position to elect three members to Rajya Sabha with ease.
On the outskirts of Santiniketan, in a sprawling bungalow, lives an octogenarian gentleman with his wife. The hurly-burly of the outside world does not disturb the peace there.
The meeting took place in the backdrop of recent spat between West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president Manas Bhuiyan and a number of TMC leaders on the Rajarhat land issue.
A rightful share of the praise heaped on the Organising Committee of the Commonwealth Games (CWG) for a spectacular inaugural function including the laser show should also go to West Bengal, for the much-required electricity for the Games is being supplied by the state.
After the sudden change in the balance of political power following the successive electoral setbacks, the ruling Communist Party of India - Marxist has made it and its government helpless in the face of growing violence and series of murderous attacks on its cadres and sympathisers. Two days back, Ananda Das, a former CPI-M Member of Legislative Assembly from Nanur, Birbhum was brutally shot dead by a gang of armed people.
With successive electoral setbacks in Panchayat, Lok Sabha and municipal polls in the past three years, Left leaders in Bengal have realised that there has been a steady and serious erosion in their traditional vote bank among the urban and rural poor.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, once the poster boy of development for the Communist Party of India-Marxist, has come under fire in the party's latest 'rectification' campaign.
After Wipro, now Infosys has also agreed to set up its campus at Rajarhat, New Town.
Land, the core issue of contention, is now being acquired selectively for the sake of setting up new industries and that too in areas where agriculture is weak.
Monday's Naxalite attack on a joint forces camp in Silda, West Midnapore, has left the West Bengal government red-faced and the Union home ministry livid. At least 24 paramilitary jawans of the Eastern Frontier Rifles were killed last evening.
Railway minister promises jobs for land deals for the project.
While an operation is on to destroy the infrastructure of Maoists in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa, a move is also being initiated for a dialogue.From Saturday, a two-day session will be held at Delhi with some human rights activists to chalk out the talking points before the Naxalites are approached formally. Though the meeting is being held under the aegis of a newly formed Delhi Policy Study Group, it appears to have the Union home ministry's blessings.
Though the general feeling among the majority of the workers is that of a relief as the management finally asked them to join work from December 2, a section of workers started demanding inclusion of the 25 workers who had been chargesheeted by the management earlier.
The recession-hit company had earlier temporarily shut its plants at both Sahagunj, near Kolkata, and Ambattur, near Chennai. But with the rising demand in the the automobile sector, it was decided to resume production. According to Ruia, the Ambattur plant will resume operation from October 19.
Cracks appeared in West Bengal's ruling Left Front as the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), one of its constituents, on Tuesday withdrew its support to the Congress-led Siliguri Corporation.
In the wake of the joint operation against the Naxalites in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal, the chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, will meet the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on October 11. On the same day, he will have a separate meeting with the Union home minister P Chidambaram on the joint operation against the extremists in the state. Both the meetings are scheduled to be held in the morning.
The rancour of associating with the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist while forming the board of the Siliguri Corporation has now created a major problem for the West Bengal unit of the Congress, as Debaprasad Roy, one of the vice-presidents of the state Congress, has resigned from the post, protesting the Left help sought by his party to gain power in the municipality.
The sorry tale of how the operating managing committees, the state-supported worker committees who were to manage tea estates in West Bengal after their exhausted owners gave up and instead ran these into the ground, while pocketing the money, has been reported in some detail. But, what of the body of workers themselves?
The Kathalguri Tea Estate in the Dooars, is now closed. Situated 40 km from Jalpaiguri, on the India-Bhutan border, it was a big garden with more than 1,200 acres of plantation and 1,479 workers. The annual output of the garden used to be 12 million kg of processed tea and sources in the Dooars Branch of the Indian Tea Association say it could have yielded up to 16 million kg of tea if it had been run properly..
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