Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has referred petitions submitted by the Trinamool Congress and the YSR Congress under the anti-defection law against their respective leaders Sisir Adhikari and K Raghu Rama Krishna Raju to the privileges committee.
The Calcutta High Court has cancelled the membership of senior leader Mukul Roy in the West Bengal assembly under the anti-defection law, marking a significant moment in Indian jurisprudence.
Veteran Trinamool Congress MP Sisir Adhikari -- father of BJP heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari -- joined the party in Egra in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and other senior leaders of the party.
Cricketer Yusuf Pathan will contest from the Baharampur Lok Sabha seat, whereas Kirti Aazd will fight from the Bardhaman-Durgapur constituency.
Adhikari had demanded Roy's resignation under the anti-defection law, pointing out that the latter joined the TMC despite winning the assembly polls from the Krishnanagar Uttar assembly constituency on a BJP ticket.
West Bengal and Assam voted in the first phase of assembly elections on Saturday. Polling was held for 30 seats in West Bengal and 47 seats in Assam amid tight security. Among the long queues of voters, there were some famous faces too who exercised their franchise.
She lashed out at the BJP and Leader of Opposition in West Bengal assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, for "threatening" Trinamool Congress leaders with arrests by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate.
In yet another jolt to the Bharatiya Janata Party, the party's Alipurduar district president, Ganga Prasad Sharma, joined the Trinamool Congress on Monday, as senior leader of the state's ruling party Mukul Roy, who also switched sides two weeks ago, claimed that this was the 'beginning of the saffron party's end' in the state.
'The TMC has become a private limited company.'
The Central Reserve Police Force on Monday moved into the interior villages of Garchakraberia and Tekhalibazar in troubled Nandigram shortly after their arrival following reports of fresh violence.
Strongly opposing the proposed nuclear power plant at Haripur in West Bengal's East Midnapore district, a Trinamool Congress Parliamentarian on Tuesday said it could not be built in the densely populated area and on a multi-crop land. "The nuclear power plant should be shifted elsewhere. It cannot be set up on a four or five crop-land threatening the livelihood of farmers. It also cannot come up in such a densely populated area," said TC MP Sisir Adhikary.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday appealed to the people to ensure the Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in 35 seats out of the 42 in West Bengal in the next Lok Sabha polls, saying that the Trinamool Congress government would not survive beyond 2025 if the target is achieved.
The BJP, which has emerged as the main opposition party in West Bengal after winning 77 seats in the assembly polls last year, failed to win even a single civic body.
"I say I am a 'big donkey' (Ami ekta boro gadha) for having failed to recognise them. I dont know (about it), but people say their 'empire' is worth Rs 5,000 crore and they will use money to buy votes. But don't vote for them," Banerjee told the rally.
Four days after Trinamool Congress heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari resigned from the state cabinet, Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee and election strategist Prashant Kishor on Tuesday met him, following which the party claimed that 'all the issues have been resolved'.
According to the sources, he wrote to TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee apprising her of his decision to resign from the party's primary membership.
Adhikari joined the BJP amid Shah's two-day visit to West Bengal ahead of the assembly elections in 2021.
The BJP released its first list of 57 candidates for the West Bengal assembly polls and fielded Suvendu Adhikari from his home turf of Nandigram, from where Trinamool Congress president and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has already announced her candidature.
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.
With his exit, the TMC will lose a crucial, politically influential vote catcher in the Jungalmahal region and areas in minority-dominated Murshidabad, and the BJP will get a face it badly needs, especially in rural Bengal, reports Aditi Phadnis.
Adhikari, the face of the Nandigram movement that catapulated Mamata Bannerjee to power in 2011, sent his resignation letter to the chief minister by fax, which he then forwarded to Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar by e-mail.
As the West Bengal chief minister was busy containing the fallout of an internecine feud in her TMC following a rebellion by a redoubtable Suvendu Adhikari, the Centre shot off a fresh letter to her government to immediately relieve three IPS officers for central deputation.
The brewing discontentment in the party may adversely impact the TMC's prospects in the next assembly polls due in April-May next year.
A blood-soaked Nandigram made Mamata Banerjee what she is today and underpins the hopes of the combustible West Bengal leader of clinching a third straight term in office.
Trinamool Congress MPs accused the Modi government of having imposed a "super emergency" by launching the exercise and engaging in "vendetta politics" by arresting two party lawmakers after it opposed the "draconian" move.
A victory in Nandigram would not only establish him as one of the tallest BJP leaders in Bengal but would push him miles ahead of others in the chief ministerial race if the party is voted to power.
'The TMC did not bother telling me, a sitting MLA for 20 years, why I was not being given a ticket.'
The list, which is a mix of seasoned political players and greenhorns, has 17 women candidates, five more than the last elections, constituting roughly 41 per cent of the candidates.
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