A huge controversy erupted on Sunday amid the polling for 30 assembly seats in West Bengal, with the Bharatiya Janata Party releasing an audio clip where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is purportedly heard cajoling a BJP leader from Nandigram to rejoin the Trinamool Congress and help her win the seat.
BJP chief J P Nadda on Thursday launched 'Lokkho Sonar Bangla' (target to build golden Bengal) manifesto crowdsourcing campaign to seek suggestions from more than two crore people in West Bengal ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.
Uttam Ghosh offer his take on the Pragya Thakur controversy.
BJP president J P Nadda drew a parallel between the post-poll result violence in West Bengal with the bloodshed during India's Partition, while his colleagues compared the Trinamool Congress with Nazis, as the saffron party's leaders protested in different cities on Tuesday against attacks targeting its workers in the state.
"I was standing outside my car with the door open. I was going to a temple there to offer my prayers. Few people came around my car and pushed the door. The door hit my leg," she said.
Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are contesting in all the 30 seats, while the Communist Party of India-Marxist is in the fray in 15 and its alliance partners of Sanjukta Morcha the Congress and ISF are competing in 13 and two seats respectively.
A Bharatiya Janata Party MLA in Punjab was allegedly thrashed and his clothes torn by a group of farmers at Malout in Muktsar district on Saturday, police said.
In a blow to the prestige of the saffron brigade, Bharatiya Janata Party's national vice president Mukul Roy along with son Subhranshu, rejoined the Trinamool Congress on Friday, with Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and other leaders of the state's ruling party welcoming the prodigal back to the fold.
Opposition parties in Lakshadweep and Kerala are up in arms against various measures initiated by the Administrator of the group of islands, terming them as 'anti-people' and have sought his recall.
Presence of Fadnavis will be keenly watched in view of recent tug of war between his home state Maharashtra and Bihar over death of Sushant Singh Rajput, a Patna born Bollywood actor.
The central probe agency had on Friday carried out a fresh round of searches in connection with the case, they said.
Speaking to reporters at the joining ceremony, the actor from Tamil Nadu said she had come to the understanding over a period of time that if the nation has to move forward, then someone like Prime Minister Narendra Modi is needed to take the country "in the right direction and to its glory".
A Trinamool Congress delegation met the Election Commission (EC) on Friday and demanded a high-level probe into an alleged attack on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram and claimed it was not an 'unfortunate incident', but a conspiracy.
Nadda also met Chandrashekar Kambar, a Jnanpith award recipient as part of the BJP's ongoing nationwide campaign on the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.
The senior Congress leader opined that the situation in Assam can now be divided into two phases -- pre-CAA and post-CAA, and it was necessary to unite all anti-CAA forces in order to protect the ethos of the Assam Accord.
Questioning the eight-phase assembly elections in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Friday that she suspects that the dates were announced as per the suggestions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah for better management of the BJP's poll campaign.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, however, said the governor is acting within his constitutional parameters while the "TMC is scared".
"The space for dissent and debate is shrinking. People are jailed without trial through arbitrarily imposed charge of sedition," the Nobel laureate alleged.
RLSP leaders feel insulted after getting no response from the BJP on their demand for a 'respectful seat sharing formula' for the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
Accompanied by BJP national general secretary and party in-charge of poll-bound Tamil Nadu, C T Ravi, and Murugan, with his security detail in tow, the home minister warmly waved at the overjoyed supporters who had thronged the airport since the morning.
'You may be an MP or an MLA; when we go to Bengal, we go as cadre.'
The decision was taken in a BJP legislature party meeting held here on Thursday. After the meeting, Kataria told reporters that the motion of no confidence will be moved in the assembly session beginning Friday. He said the proposal was being finalised.
Union Home Minister and top Bharatiya Janata Party leader Amit Shah on Thursday set a target of 200 out of the total 294 seats in the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections and to come to power in the state, party sources said.
The state government, however, has not sent any report as sought by the Union home ministry on "serious security lapses" during Nadda's two-day visit to West Bengal.
The announcement by Banerjee, who is also the chief of the ruling TMC, comes just months ahead of the assembly polls, due in April-May.
"It is natural that people cannot tolerate those who are growing. Vijayendra in no way at any moment has interfered (in administration). "As state vice president (BJP), he is doing his duty by travelling across the state to strengthen the party," Yediyurappa said in response to a question.
Against the backdrop of the Lok Sabha results, a much larger scale of desertion was anticipated from the TMC. 'It seems, people don't believe that the ship is sinking.'
'Rabindranath Tagore, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Swami Vivekananda, all wanted and argued for a united Bengali culture, and there is no room in their social objective for trying to excite one community against another'
In yet another jolt for the Trinamool Congress dispensation, West Bengal forest minister Rajib Banerjee quit the Mamata Banerjee cabinet, joining the growing list of dissenters who have put the ruling camp in a tight spot ahead of the assembly elections.
Karnataka Water Resources Minister Ramesh Jarkiholi on Wednesday resigned from the state cabinet, following allegations of sexual harassment against him.
The BJP has incorporated caste as a significant component of its politics.
Shah, who was accompanied by BJP national vice-president Mukul Roy, national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargya, was greeted with slogans of 'Amit Shah zindabad', 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' by party workers at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata.
Over 1.54 crore voters in the eastern states of West Bengal and Assam will exercise their franchise in the 1st phase of polling
Singh had said the slogan of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' was being misused to construct a "militant and purely emotional" idea of India that excludes millions of residents and citizens.
The BJP has to endorse chief minister K Palaniswami's candidature for the CM's post for the polls and agree to its other terms -- like non-participation in government -- and if not, should rethink of its 2021 electoral options, the AIADMK indicated at its meet.
Claiming that the Trinamool Congress is not perturbed over desertions by some leaders, she said politics is a solemn ideology and philosophy and one cannot change these everyday like clothes.
Old-timers seem not impressed with the idea of dropping from the RJD poster its jailed supremo who is acknowledged, across party lines, as the biggest crowd puller ever seen in Bihar's poitical arena.
If the protests have cemented the ties between the peasantry and the traders, the political implications for the BJP might become too serious to be disregarded because its core base was made up of the urban Khatri merchants.
'Mamata will beat the living daylights out of BJP workers with the result that people who are not totally committed, they will promptly leave the party and go back to Trinamool.' 'Or when they find they cannot get what they came to the BJP for they will go back to Trinamool.'
While the BPF and the UPPL are considered rivals in the Bodo-dominated areas, there was no pre-poll alliance among other parties as well.
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