"The death knell of Mamata Banerjee's regime has rung. We will form the next government in Bengal with a two-third majority," he added.
Claiming that Shah is getting "frustrated" by "poor turnout" at his rallies, Banerjee also alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party is plotting conspiracies to kill her as her security director Vivek Sahay was removed by the Election Commission after she sustained injuries last week in Purba Medinipur's Nandigram.
'One afternoon while I was shopping for curtains, a friend called up to say, "Congratulations, you have been named the TMC candidate from Bankura." I was stupefied. I finished my shopping and on my return home, called up Mamata."What have you done?" I asked her. She just kept laughing,' Moon Moon Sen, the TMC candidate from Bankura, tells Rediff.com's Indrani Roy in this exclusive interview.
Mamata said the saffron party could not build even a small Ram temple in the last five years.
Tribals constitute 7-8 per cent of the state's population, and are a deciding factor in 47 assembly seats and seven Lok Sabha constituencies spread across the Junglemahal districts of Purulia, Paschim Medinipur, Bankura and Jhargram in southern Bengal and Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar in the north.
A large voter turnout of more than 80 per cent despite sporadic incidents of violence and allegations of vote fraud on Thursday marked the second phase of West Bengal assembly polls.
The 34-year-old TMC national general secretary was seen entering the new office of the central probe agency in central Delhi around 11 am.
Infant deaths have returned to haunt West Bengal with 19 babies dying in Bankura and Malda districts in the last two days.
Annapurna Devi, Subhas Sarkar and Rajkumar Ranjan Singh will be the new ministers of state for education.
The union minister went to the residence of Sanatan Singh at Balijhuri and had lunch there, sitting on the floor of the thatched house.
Shah, who held a closed door meeting to take stock of the party organisation, said he could 'sense massive public anger' against the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government in the state and gave a call to 'uproot' it in the state polls.
L Murugan, 44, is the only newly-sworn minister who is not a member of Rajya Sabha or Lok Sabha.
Shah, who was accompanied by BJP national vice-president Mukul Roy, national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargya, was greeted with slogans of 'Amit Shah zindabad', 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' by party workers at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata.
"Commission maintains the position that they would not like to keep on being put in the dock for alleged proximity to any political entity," Deputy Election Commissioner in charge of West Bengal Sudeep Jain wrote to Banerjee.
Voters in 30 assembly constituencies of West Bengal and 47 of Assam exercised their franchise on Saturday.
Alleging that the Bharatiya Janata Party was bringing in goons from outside to stop people from exercising their franchise in Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee urged women to 'confront the hoodlums with ladle, spatula' and other cooking utensils.
Banerjee, the 34-year-old nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, is stated to have sent an email to the investigating officer of the case citing some personal reasons for his non-appearance.
Subrata Pati, who is in Ahanda village in West Bengal's Bankura district, climbs atop a neem tree each day to receive uninterrupted signal on his cell phone, which he uses to teach his pupils with.
A teenaged deaf and dumb patient whose family complained that their daughter had been raped at the Bankura Sammilani Medical College Hospital was on Wednesday taken to Kolkata by police and Health department doctors for forensic tests, police said.
Trinamool Congress won three of the eight assembly seats in the bypolls in seven states with Communist Party of India -Marxist and the Nationalist Congress Party retaining their seats while Congress lost in Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh in the results announced on Friday.
The TMC victory came on the heels of its recent civic election success which saw the ruling party winning four of the six municipalities
Sporadic incidents of violence were reported from various places that went to polls on Saturday during the first phase of the West Bengal assembly election, even as the overall poll situation was largely peaceful with 79.79 per cent turnout recorded till the end of voting, an official said.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew and Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee and his wife for questioning in a money laundering case linked to an alleged coal scam in the state, officials said on Saturday.
>The BJP's star campaigner could not help even half the number of candidates for whom he campaigned in his aggressive 'Didi-o-Didi' style in Bengal
An initial probe has revealed that the 53-year-old singer, who was on a two-day tour to Kolkata to perform at two college programmes, was 'almost mobbed' by fan followers at the hotel where he had returned to after performing at Nazrul Mancha auditorium in the southern part of Kolkata.
Three more infants have died at the state-run Malda Medical College and Hospital taking the toll to 18 in the last four days, hospital sources said on Saturday.
Her campaign in the high-stakes constituency will begin at 11 am on Monday with an 8-kilometre roadshow from Khudiram More to Thakurchowk in Nandigram Block 2, followed by a public meeting in Jansabha Boyal II.
Omkeshwar Singh, head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
As West Bengal readies for its sixth and final phase of the assembly election, rediff.com's Sanchari Bhattacharya visits the Maoist-affected districts West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia, to find that talk about poriborton is the last thing on the villagers' minds as they struggle each day to make ends meet.
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.
West Bengal BJP Yuva Morcha president and member of Parliament Saumitra Khan has claimed that law and order has collapsed under the Trinamool Congress government and President's rule will be imposed in the state by December.
The West Bengal government is issuing certificates of COVID-19 vaccination to the people in the age group of 18-44 sponsored by the state with the photograph of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The BJP urged the EC to take legal action against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her allegation that Union Home Minister Amit Shah may be influencing the poll watchdog and accused her of running a 'smear campaign' against him.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is in pain because of the injury she received recently, Home Minister Amit Shah said on Monday, wishing her a speedy recovery, but questioned that whether she could feel the pain of families of BJP workers who have been killed during the Trinamool Congress's rule in West Bengal.
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'.
With the dust yet to settle down on Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament Tapas Pal's incendiary comments, another leader Arup Chakraborty on Tuesday asked party workers to kill those who intruded into their homes at night.
Addressing a protest rally at Bankura against rising fuel prices and the proposed privatisation of trains on Saturday, Kalyan Banerjee demanded Sitharaman's resignation.
Among the 36 new faces in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers, eight are lawyers, four are doctors, two former IAS officers and four MBA degree holders, besides several engineers, making it an eclectic mix of professionals.
The system moved north-northeastwards at 20 kmph in the last six hours and is over west-central Bay of Bengal, 90 km from Gopalpur, 120 km from Puri and 210 km from Paradip, the weather office said in its 11.30 am bulletin.
'It doesn't help to transpose the Hindi heartland model on Bengal. Bengalis don't understand its dynamics. They won't comprehend the impact of Modi's dip in the Ganga because Bengal's political culture is different. Even in the Ramakrishna Mission Ashrams, Christ is worshipped on Christmas. It's difficult to polarise Bengal religiously'
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