Announcing the name of candidates for the West Bengal assembly polls, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said she will be contesting from the Nandigram constituency as announced earlier.
Rajeev Kumar, the Kolkata police commissioner, is known for his impeccable investigating and electronic surveillance skills.
Since the formation of the CPI-M, following a split in the Communist Party of India in 1964, the party never drew a blank in the state in Lok Sabha elections.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist raised quite a few eyebrows breaking ranks with the Left parties and pledging its support to United Progressive Alliance's Presidential nominee Pranab Mukherjee.
The new BJP government in Tripura has renamed a lane leading to the official residences of the CM after party ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerjee.
'Look at the number of billionaires, the number of new billionaires in India.' 'Adani and Ambani are not the only ones.' 'What's wrong with people making money as long as it benefits us?'
Sources at the private hospital where Mitra was admitted to said he died due to heart and age-related ailments.
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.
The 'NaMo wave' failed to influence voters in Tripura, which remained a Communist bastion with the Left Front retaining both the Lok Sabha seats with record margins and a vote share of 64.0 per cent.
Claiming that the Left Front has failed to cope with the situation in West Bengal, controversial Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Abdur Rezzak Mollah today used a naxalite platform, without party consent, to call for building a strong Left platform to 'resist attack' on farmers and the working class in the state.
Five people were killed, including 4 in the firing by Central Industrial Security Force personnel, during the fourth phase of polling
'Mamata wanted the Congress in alliance with the BJP in Bengal against the Left Front government.' 'Pranab Mukherjee opposed it, stating it would amount to compromising on secularism.' 'In 2021, Mamata defeats the BJP and becomes a champion of secularism.'
In the first major test of popularity, the Trinamool Congress on Tuesday won the elections to three civic bodies and was leading in another while the Congress and Left Front major Communist Party of India-Marxist bagged one each in West Bengal.
Protest programmes against the hike will be held by Leftist organisations throughout the state from May 26 to May 30 and rallies will be organised on May 31, he said.
Adhikari joined the BJP amid Shah's two-day visit to West Bengal ahead of the assembly elections in 2021.
"We are boycotting tomorrow's swearing-in ceremony. When our workers are being attacked throughout the state, how can we join the swearing-in ceremony?" state BJP president Dilip Ghosh said.
'The Shaheen Bagh model of bullets and biryani won't work. The RSS looked at a template that would play to Bengali pride and harp on the state's development. Mamata's slogan to defeat the Left Front was 'Bengal awake and arise'. She promised to check the flight of capital from Bengal to far-flung states and usher in a renaissance. The RSS wants the BJP to pitch this line because it feels Mamata hasn't delivered on her promises.'
Ahead of the second phase of polls in the state, Banerjee's letter, which was released by the Trinamool Congress on Wednesday, seeks to drum up support from opposition leaders by stating how non-BJP states have suffered due to the saffron party led Centre's actions.
The Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal, which catapulted to power because of the Singur and Nandigram agitations, on Friday decided to withdraw cases filed by previous Left Front regime against activists, including two ministers and a prominent Trinamool Congress MP.
Branding Trinamool Congress rebels as 'traitors' like Mir Jafar, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday took a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party for fielding the turncoats in the polls leaving saffron party old-timers shed tears.
'If there is one thing our politicians, especially those with their ear to the ground, understand, it is the reality that their voters want three things from their children's schooling: English, English, English', notes Shekhar Gupta.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said there is no alternative to the Trinamool Congress, and no other party can take its place in the state.
More than 750 constituencies spread across four states and one union territory will go to the polls on Tuesday
'Even if the BJP does not come to power, the system has changed.'
The Left Front camp seems shellshocked as news of its heavyweights Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Gautam Deb, Ashim Dasgupta trailing in their respective constituencies poured in
Pawan Ruia has finally done it, a beaming Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, then West Bengal chief minister, had said at the reopening of the 70-year-old Sahagunj factory owned by Dunlop in 2005. But with the Calcutta high court passing a winding-up order in 2013 and the Trinamool Congress-led state government passing a Bill to take over the company in 2016, the once-upon-a-time undisputed leader in the Indian tyre industry looks vastly undone. But that can hardly be a deterrent for Ruia, who has a penchant for making headlines one way or the other.
Tharoor suffered head injuries while performing a ritual at a temple in Thiruvananthapuram.
All Opposition political parties were united on Tuesday in their condemnation of the government's decision to detain Anna Hazare and his aides, hours before the Gandhian activist was scheduled to go on an indefinite fast against corruption in New Delhi. Leaders of the Left Front are scheduled to meet their counterparts in the Bharatiya Janata Party and other Opposition parties at 2 pm on Tuesday to chalk out their strategy in the wake of Hazare's detention.
The desecration of Vidyasagar's statue during Amit Anilchandra Shah's rally, which the TMC projected to be a 'Bhojpuri' and 'Dhokla' invasion on West Bengal's culture, may help her gain some favour with middle-class and erudite Bengalis in the last phase of the polls.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who frequently alleged during the Left Front regime that her phone was being tapped, on Thursday said an inquiry has been ordered into the matter. No rules were followed while tapping the phones of political leaders, journalists and even common people during Left Front regime. "We have asked the chief secretary, the home secretary and the Kolkata police chief to probe at whose instance such phone tapping had been done," she said.
The question that many observers of Bengal politics may be asking today is whether Singur will also mark the beginning of Banerjee's political downfall.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday claimed that West Bengal has been taken on a road of destruction under the 34-year Left Front rule and assured that the Congress-Trinamool alliance is determined to free the state from this "misrule".
It will be the year of preparation for the electoral test in Uttar Pradesh, due in 2022. But before that, the West Bengal Assembly election will set the mood for the rest of 2021.
Kicking off a virtual campaign for the assembly polls due in three months, Bhattacharjee alleged that 'foreign forces' along with the Congress, Trinamool Congress and Maoists had ganged up against his government.
Priest-turned politician Yogi Adityanath, 44, who was on Sunday sworn in as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, now joins Trivendra Singh Rawat of Uttarakhand, M L Khattar of Haryana, Sarbananda Sonowal of Assam and 70-year-old Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik of Odisha in the league of singletons running state governments.
The top leaders of the Communist Party of India-Marxist met in New Delhi on Monday to study its debacle in the assembly elections. Here's what they analysed.
The state government as an interim measure would raise Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion) from market borrowings and Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) as loan from small savings, Mitra told reporters at the state secretariat.
Congress is the only other horse in the race for national power, never mind how distant. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah know better than to take the Congress lightly, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Political parties bracing for the crucial April-May Assembly polls in West Bengal have put up a number of new faces, marking a departure after many years in the composition of candidate lists. The ruling Left Front, facing its toughest battle since 1977 when it came to power, leads the pack by injecting fresh blood in almost half of the total 294 constituencies, throwing out some prominent, but tainted names.
There will be 2,364 counting halls as compared to 1,002 halls in 2016 in 822 assemble constituencies, a more than 200 percent increase, in view of the COVID guidelines, according to the Election Commission which had drawn flak from the courts over the conduct of polls during the pandemic.
