Thirteen years after their small car project was forced out of West Bengal following the anti-land acquisition movement in Singur, Industry and IT Minister Partha Chatterjee has said talks are on with the Tatas for big-ticket investments in the state. Underscoring job creation as the TMC government's top priority, Chatterjee also said incentives to companies will depend on ability to generate employment. He said the Mamata Banerjee dispensation wants two large manufacturing units to be set up by any prominent industrial house at the earliest. "We never had any enmity with the Tatas, neither we fought against them. "They are one of the most respected and biggest business houses of this country and also abroad. "You can't blame the Tatas (for the Singur fiasco).
'What did we get out of this agitation? Nothing... Now we feel it was all a mistake. We have no work, and our land has turned infertile. We are living in abject poverty'
The BJP on Sunday congratulated Mamata Banerjee and TMC for winning the West Bengal assembly election for the third successive term and assured that the saffron party will work as a constructive opposition.
Mamata Banerjee had founded the party in 1998 after breaking away from the Congress, and has headed it ever since.
A special cabinet which met in the afternoon decided to recommend Governor Arif Mohammed Khan to issue an ordinance to repeal Section 118-A which got his assent on Saturday.
Dhankhar in his strongly worded two-page letter dated January 18 said that this was the 'last opportunity' given to him to provide his response in the matter.
While the TMC was able to maintain its hold on the southern and coastal parts of the state, the BJP is doing well in the northern and western parts of the state, all predominantly tribal areas.
Addressing a rally in Bankura district, she described the BJP as a "party of outsiders", and alleged that it is bringing "goondas to create terror" in the state.
Aditi Phadnis predicts frequent stand-offs between the Centre and states in the future.
Counting of votes for the bypolls in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand will be taken up on Sunday.
In Tripura, the challenge for the chief minister is less from the alliance partners and more from his own party, the BJP.
Hailing Banerjee as the "real Bengal tigress", the party, which had earlier said that it would join the electoral battle in the state, vowed to "stand in solidarity" with the TMC camp.
Democratic Left Front politician Nanayakkara was among the 42 members who declared independence in Parliament from the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) coalition.
Though the mandate is seen largely an outcome of Banerjee's welfare schemes, she has promised to industrialise at a faster pace, or so read the manifesto.
With a substantially weakened Left Front and the Congress, political observers say the anti-Trinamool vote will go to the BJP.
TMC's campaign in the seat in south Kolkata is already underway with the Election Commission announcing the by-poll on Saturday, following a request from the state government to avoid a constitutional crisis.
It's a political gambit aimed at the BJP's Suvendu Adhikari who won the seat in 2016 as a TMC candidate, while also retroceding to the land movement that catapulted her to power.
Several trains were cancelled, highways and key roads blocked and many thousands stranded for hours on Monday as a nationwide 10-hour shutdown against the Centre's three agri laws disrupted lives across parts of India, particularly in the north.
Though the BJP is running too close for comfort, populist schemes and support among Muslims may help Mamata Banerjee overcome the challenge, observes Aditi Phadnis.
Noted economist and senior Trinamool Congress leader Amit Mitra is likely to step down as the West Bengal finance minister and even retire from active politics due to ill health, party sources said on Sunday.
Violent clashes erupted between activists of the ruling BJP and the principal opposition, CPI-M, in different parts of Tripura.
Making a scathing attack against the Left government, he said the practice of giving pension benefits to the personal staff of ministers just after completing two years a few months ago was a 'gross violation and abuse of authority.'
Road and rail traffic was partially affected in some regions on Monday during a 'Bharat bandh' called against the Agnipath military recruitment scheme, while protests appeared to taper off in many states, with authorities stepping up security and imposing curbs after days of unrest.
The direction to Kerala Rail Development Corporation Ltd (KRDCL), or K-Rail as it is popularly known, was welcomed by Congress-led United Democratic Front opposition as they termed it a victory of the first phase of the struggle against the semi-high speed rail corridor.
Nandigram, 126 km south of Kolkata, is Suvendu Adhikari's bastion, where he has vowed to defeat Mamata Banerjee by 50,000 votes or quit politics.
'I can only say that it was a revenge killing. We have seen everything from inside our houses. We ran into our dwellings on hearing a mob approaching Sonu's house and hurling bombs. After that, I don't know anything'
The words 'industry', 'industrial development', 'jobs', and 'employment' have been ringing with higher frequency since Mamata Banerjee stepped into her third term with landslide victory after a high-octane election last year. "Our government's next target is industrial development," the chief minister (CM) had been heard stating at different public meetings in the past few months - perhaps setting the tone for the sixth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) slated for later this month. Investor summits by any state are about intent, big numbers, and tall claims. Yet in competitive federalism, its importance as a marketing tool is undeniable.
In the 145-year history of Kolkata Municipal Corporation, nationalist leaders like Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Bidhan Chandra Roy, also a former chief minister, graced the mayor's chair in pre-Independent India.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday took a dig at Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar's New Delhi visit as she said a 'child can be cajoled into silence' but not an elderly man, noting that she has thrice written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to withdraw him from the state.
High drama was witnessed at Tamluk in Purba Medinipur district on Sunday afternoon as West Bengal Leader of Opposition (LoP) Suvendu Adhikari was prevented by police from visiting violence-hit areas in Howrah.
Though the BJP failed in its effort to dislodge Banerjee from power, it's for the first time that it will be the main opposition party in the state assembly, rising from a measly three seats in 2016 to 77.
'For the first time one single party is getting 49% which is a record of its own.'
In a first such action in India's electoral history, the Election Commission had Wednesday ordered campaigning in the nine West Bengal constituencies to end at 10 pm on Thursday, instead of 6 pm on Friday, in the wake of violence between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Trinamool Congress in Kolkata during Amit Shah's roadshow.
The West Bengal on Thursday became the sixth state to pass a resolution against the three contentious farm laws enacted by the Centre, even as the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party staged a walkout from the assembly amid 'Jai Shri Ram' slogans.
Sharma had on Monday slammed Congress' association with the ISF led by Muslim cleric Abbas Siddiqui in West Bengal, contending that it was against the "Gandhian and Nehruvian secularism" and the party cannot be selective in fighting "communalists".
Having failed its litmus test, the Bengal's ruling party is back to square one, trying to draw up a fresh strategy ahead of the polls in Meghalaya and Tripura.
"Congratulations to Mamata Didi for @AITCofficial's win in West Bengal. The Centre will continue to extend all possible support to the West Bengal Government to fulfil people's aspirations and also to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic," he tweeted.
The elections are not only a means for TMC to prove its wide, unopposed mass allegiance but also a way to bargain for national leadership among regional political parties in the road to New Delhi.
Having emerged as the face of opposition resistance to the Narendra Modi juggernaut after the TMC's triumph in the assembly elections, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is locked in an unequal battle as she squares off with "lightweight" rivals in her own lair--Bhabanipur.
Over one crore voters in West Bengal will decide the political fate of 342 candidates on Saturday, when 45 assembly constituencies go to polls in the fifth phase, amid a raging second wave of COVID-19.
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