After West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose refused to concede to their request that their swearing-in be held in the assembly, two newly elected Trinamool Congress legislators held a protest on Wednesday on the assembly premises.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
'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.'
Trinamool Congress Monday said Left's failure to support a no confidence motion to be brought by it in winter session will mean that their opposition to FDI in multi-brand retail "is false and sham" and voiced hope that all parties would come on board.
Opposition parties on Tuesday decried the GJM for raising the Gorkhaland demand before Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at a government programme, with the Communist Party of India-Marxist accusing the Trinamool Congress of having created a 'Frankenstein'.
The bypolls are considered to be important ahead of the assembly elections in 2016.
Earlier, the party's members of Parliament had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for removing Mehta over his reported meeting with West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party leader Suvendu Adhikari.
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.
"This is the minimum expectation at this time of national tragedy," she said.
Addressing a protest rally at Bankura against rising fuel prices and the proposed privatisation of trains on Saturday, Kalyan Banerjee demanded Sitharaman's resignation.
Lok Sabha constituencies that sprung a surprise in the 2024 polls.
During the Zero Hour of the Lok Sabha, BJP MP Anurag Thakur tried to corner the Leader of Opposition and Congress MP, Rahul Gandhi, by alleging that he has not spoken about ensuring the safety of minorities in Bangladesh.
Banerjee said she will not allow implementation of the CAA, the NRC and the Uniform Civil Code in the state.
In West Bengal's Howrah two women from a family were allegedly gang-raped by seven men, who reportedly have links with Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress.
Modi addressed scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation command centre in Bengaluru, who were involved in the Chandrayaan-3 mission and lauded them for their efforts.
Debutant legislator Rekha Gupta was sworn in as Delhi chief minister along with six ministers on Thursday in a grand show of strength full of colour and spectacle to mark the Bharatiya Janata Party's return to power in the city after more than 26 years.
Chowdhury said the schedule of the yatra was submitted to the state administration long ago.
"Everything may look normal in Kashmir. Everything may look normal here. We may be celebrating the victory, although of course some people believe that that victory or that success of 2024 was perhaps only marginal, perhaps a lot more needs to be done," he said.
Embroiled in a battle for survival, Left parties marginally improved their performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, leading in eight to 10 seats according to vote counting trends.
The counting of votes for the bypolls to 46 assembly seats in 13 states and in the Lok Sabha segments of Nanded in Maharashtra and Wayanad in Kerala, a crucial electoral exercise since the parliamentary polls in April-May, will begin at 8 am on Saturday.
Temples across Uttar Pradesh were packed with devotees on Sunday for Ram Navami, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath leading prayers at the Gorakhnath Temple. Heavy crowds were witnessed at temples in Lucknow, Gorakhpur, and Varanasi, where security was heightened. In Gorakhpur, Adityanath performed the traditional kanya pujan ritual, while in Varanasi, a 51-foot statue of Lord Ram has become a major attraction. The festival was celebrated with enthusiastic fervor across the state.
Virtually rejecting Trinamool Congress' appeal to support a no-confidence motion to be brought by it, Communist Party of India-Marxist said such a move would only help the government cover up all its "wrong" policies.
A group of around 130 Dalit families in West Bengal's Purba Bardhaman district have been facing discrimination for centuries, being denied access to a local temple. The families, belonging to the traditional community of cobblers and weavers, have been ostracized and face economic hardship due to this caste-based practice. Despite recent attempts by the administration to resolve the issue, the situation remains tense and the families are left with few options.
A group of MPs from the opposition alliance INDIA will visit Manipur on July 29 and 30 to assess the situation in the northeastern state which has been engulfed in ethnic violence since May 3.
Modi said that Congress' tally in the Lok Sabha polls will be an "all-time low"
The opposition's Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) will hold a 'maha rally' at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan on March 31 to safeguard the country's interests and democracy, Aam Aadmi Party leader Gopal Rai said on Sunday.
The Trinamool Congress on Wednesday blamed the Communist Party of India-Marxist for the violence at Bamunghata in South 24 Parganas district with a party minister saying that the Marxist party would not have existed had not the TMC given a call for change.
The BJP, which contested more seats this time than in 2019 but is likely to fall short of the magic figure of 272, garnered 36.91 per cent of the total votes polled, a drop of around 0.39 percentage points as of 6.15 pm.
The TMC-led West Bengal government has already started laying the groundwork for the election, setting the tone with the recent Bengal Global Business Summit and the state Budget.
'If you stay out of power for long, you become irrelevant, your party members become restless and start looking to jump ship.'
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the NDA won 64 seats -- 62 bagged by the BJP and two by Apna Dal.
'The BJP will get the lion's share of the Opposition vote. I would give the Congress-Left around 15 per cent.'
He argued that if inflation is low, stable and moving towards the 4 per cent target, why has the RBI not revised downward the bank rate fixed in June 2023?
According to sources, Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Anand Sharma and Jairam Ramesh reached out to other Opposition leaders for the boycott of the event.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was an experienced leader and it would be great if a proposal came to make him the convenor of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), his deputy Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday.
Kharge alleged that Dhankhar is working as a government spokesperson and acting like a school headmaster, often sermonising experienced opposition leaders and preventing them from speaking in the House.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday alleged that the Congress displayed disregard for Hindu traditions by calling the sacred 'Sengol' a "golden stick gifted" to former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and tucking it away in a museum.
Opposition leaders on Monday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his comments made at an elections rally in Rajasthan, with some leaders also appealing to people to reach out to the Election Commission of India.
'Most senior Congress leaders in Assam have a secret understanding with the BJP.' 'They are hobnobbing with the chief minister for their self-interest.'
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday asserted that she did not threaten junior doctors at state-run hospitals, who have been continuing cease-work for 21 days now to protest against the alleged rape and murder of a woman medic. Addressing a rally organised by the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad, Banerjee had on Wednesday urged the agitating junior doctors of Bengal to urgently consider returning to duty and said she doesn't want to lodge first information reports (FIRs) against the striking doctors in consideration of their future careers.
