Both Houses of Parliament were adjourned for the day after repeated disruptions amid uproarious scenes as members of treasury and opposition benches traded charges on the Soros and Adani issues.
The Congress is hopeful of soon finalising the Lok Sabha poll seat-sharing arrangements with the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) allies Aam Aadmi Party and Trinamool Congress, sources said on Friday, days after the principal opposition party arrived at an understanding with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, on an official visit to the United Kingdom, took a refreshing jog in London's Hyde Park, wearing a white saree and her signature white slippers. Banerjee also attended a high tea reception at India House, hosted by Vikram K Doraiswami, the High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom, bringing together business, cultural, and political leaders to strengthen ties between Bengal and Britain. The discussions centered around fostering economic partnerships and deepening people-to-people connections.
Taking a dig at a section of Bangladeshi politicians, who said the country has legitimate claims over Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday wondered whether Indians 'would have lollipop' when external forces would try to occupy Indian lands.
Questions are being raised on the future of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) as differences among its constituents come to the fore and several parties call for serious introspection by the Congress after a string of debilitating electoral losses.
Ashoka Univeristy associate professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad has been arrested for his social media post on Operation Sindoor, police said in Sonipat on Sunday.
Students of the elite Indian Institute of Management in Kolkata are vying for an internship with the ruling Trinamool Congress to be a part of the party's Lok Sabha war-room.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla is expected to name the committee's chairperson soon.
Irfan Pathan took time off from commenting on IPL 2024 to campaign for hos brother Yusuf Pathan, who is contesting the Lok Sabha election as the Trinamool Congress candidate from Baharampur in Bengal, which is thousands of miles from Vadodara where the retired cricketers were born and raised.
A delegation of the National Commission for Women (NCW), led by its chairman Vijaya Rahatkar, met with riot-affected women in Murshidabad district of West Bengal, assuring them of safety and demanding an NIA probe into the recent communal clashes. The women narrated their harrowing experiences and demanded permanent BSF camps in select areas of the district. The NCW team also visited relief camps in Malda district and assessed the condition of women affected by the violence.
The delegations led by Baijayant Panda, Ravi Shankar Prasad (both Bharatiya Janata Party), Sanjay Kumar Jha (Janata Dal-United), Shrikant Shinde (Shiv Sena), Shashi Tharoor (Congress), Kanimozhi (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and Supriya Sule (Nationalist Congress Party-Sharad Pawar) will visit a total of 32 countries and the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
An MP from Baharampur since 1999 and the reigning Pradesh Congress president of West Bengal, this was perhaps Chowdhury's toughest electoral challenge which came in the form Pathan, the non-resident TMC candidate.
The feisty TMC boss also accused the CPI-M of ruining her party's relationship with the Congress, its ally in the Opposition bloc INDIA at the national level.
In a jolt to the Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Front in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress defeated its candidates in trouble-torn Nandigram in the three-tier panchayat elections. The front also faced rout in three zilla parishad seats in Singur to Trinamool Congress candidates. The polls are seen as a litmus test for the Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee government's farmland acquisition policy for industries.
Key individual parties have cornered a larger share, with some favouring regional and others national players.
Opposition parties in the Indian Parliament walked out of the Rajya Sabha after their demand for an immediate discussion on the alleged mismanagement at the Maha Kumbh, where a stampede led to several deaths, was rejected. The Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, Jagdeep Dhankhar, declined to suspend the scheduled business of the day to take up the issue, citing his previous rulings regarding notices under Rule 267.
'Mamata needs to address the anger and resentment among various sections of the Hindu community because low-scale communal violence has always paid richer electoral dividends for the BJP.'
Trinamool Congress leader Derek O'Brien Thursday held West Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury responsible for an alliance not working out between the two parties in West Bengal.
Referring to the mimicry issue, President Droupadi Murmu also said she was dismayed at the manner in which Vice President Dhankhar was "humiliated" in Parliament complex.
Fish sellers of Chittranjan Park found themselves in a state of disbelief last week when the anti-meat overdrive of the Hindu right hit the local markets with a warning to shut shops because they were close to a temple.
Some constituents of the alliance have raised concern that the panels, particularly the 14-member coordination committee, are at risk of becoming ineffective, as their decisions have so far not been acted upon.
India's Parliament is set to begin its Budget session on Friday, with opposition parties poised to demand a discussion on the alleged mismanagement of the Maha Kumbh festival in Prayagraj, where 30 pilgrims died in a stampede. The opposition also accused the government of politicising parliamentary committees and pushing its agenda through its majority. The session will start with President Droupadi Murmu addressing both houses of Parliament. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget on Saturday for the eighth consecutive time.
Two bills that lay down the mechanism to hold simultaneous elections were introduced in the Lok Sabha after a fiery debate on Tuesday, with the opposition terming the move 'dictatorial' and Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal asserting that the legislation would not tamper with the powers enjoyed by states.
With the crucial by-election to 10 assembly seats in West Bengal barely nine days away, Communist Party of India-Marxist patriarch Jyoti Basu on Sunday charged Trinamool Congress with joining hands with the Maoists to unleash violence in the state.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist on Wednesday hit out at the Trinamool Congress blaming it for seeking the stoppage of anti-Maoist operations in West Bengal and providing 'political patronage' to the extremists.
WC star Azad beats state BJP heavyweight Ghosh from Bardhaman-Durgapur constituency
A three-judge Supreme Court bench will hear petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, on April 16. The petitions, including those by politicians and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, were filed in the top court challenging the validity of the newly-enacted law. The Centre has filed a caveat in the apex court, seeking a hearing before any order is passed.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said his party was discussing the seat-sharing arrangements for the Lok Sabha polls with the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, and the issue would be "resolved".
Voting for the bypolls in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were held on Wednesday.
The Communist Party of India - Marxist, which is under all-round attack over the unabated violence in Nandigram, on Monday accused the Trinamool Congress of taking the help of Maoists to create trouble in the area and insisted that normalcy will be restored there soon. Party General Secretary Prakash Karat said that the Trinamool Congress was indulging in certain activities as it had failed to win the confidence of people in a democratic manner.
The Supreme Court of India has asked petitioners in two Public Interest Litigations (PILs) to make representations to the Election Commission of India (ECI) regarding their demand for uploading polling booth-wise voter turnout data on the ECI website. The PILs, filed by TMC MP Mahua Moitra and NGO Association for Democratic Reforms, seek a direction for the ECI to upload the data within 48 hours of the conclusion of polling in Lok Sabha and assembly elections. The ECI, represented by senior advocate Maninder Singh, expressed willingness to deliberate on the matter and suggested a meeting with the petitioners to address their concerns. The court has adjourned the hearing to the week of July 28.
A fresh strain in the Trinamool Congress-Congress alliance came to the fore on Friday when Youth Congress workers took out a silent procession in Kolkata denouncing "attacks" on Congress by the alliance partner in West Bengal.
As the Bharatiya Janata Party, which the former Union minister and two-time MP quit in 2021, and the Trinamool engage in a verbal war ahead of the general elections due in a couple of months' time, Babul Supriyo is very clear that if the BJP wins, as is widely expected, "democracy may not exist in India."
Acting Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, in his first visit to the national capital after leading his ruling alliance to an unprecedented second straight term in the state.
After the Congress' shock defeat in Haryana, the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) parties flexed their muscles on Wednesday, accusing the grand old party of ignoring them.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to stop mass joinings from the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal amid growing resentment within the saffron party over rampant inductions without scrutiny, senior leaders said on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court of India has invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers and other staff in West Bengal's state-run and state-aided schools, deeming the selection process "vitiated and tainted." The court ordered the state government to conduct a fresh selection process within three months. The decision comes after a Calcutta High Court verdict in April 2024, which also annulled the appointments. The apex court, while upholding the high court's order, made some modifications, including exempting disabled employees from returning their salaries. The case stemmed from alleged irregularities in the 2016 recruitment process by the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC), involving OMR sheet tampering and rank-jumping. The Supreme Court had previously termed it a "systemic fraud." Former West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee and Trinamool Congress MLAs Manik Bhattacharya and Jiban Krishna Saha are among the accused being investigated in the recruitment scam.
"Mr Kalyan Banerjee rose in this House and said sorry. But I will say that we all come to this House with the spirit of contribution to the nation's development...but we also come with a sense of self respect.
Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra on Wednesday wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla flagging alerts received by several opposition leaders about 'state-sponsored' attacks on their iPhones, and urged him to provide them protection to continue doing their duties.
The juggernaut of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, which triumphed in three of the four east and north-eastern states that went for assembly bypolls on Saturday, was halted yet again in West Bengal where Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress registered a six-on-six clean sweep.
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