Glimpses from India and around the world that will make you smile and cry.
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.
INDIA bloc parties are set to raise issues such as the Pahalgam attack, US President Trump's claims of brokering a ceasefire, and concerns over electoral roll revisions in Bihar during the Parliament's Monsoon session.
Glimpses from India and around the world that will make you smile and cry.
Senior Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee resigned as the party's chief whip in the Lok Sabha, citing unfair blame for lack of coordination among MPs and internal party conflicts.
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.
Trinamool Congress leader and Member of Parliament Mahua Moitra has moved the Supreme Court challenging an order of the Election Commission of India for special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar.
BJP strategists are missing something somewhere, and they have not acknowledged it, to be able to repair it in good time, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
A year after the RG Kar rape-murder Swarupa Dutt/Rediff look at the city where it happened, Kolkata -- its study in dichotomy, at once the self-proclaimed cultural capital of India as also a petri dish for a peculiar rage that breeds crimes against women.
The decision came after Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju called Trinamool supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, a source said.
'As we read and assess what is going on around us in the India of 2025, it is instructive to do this through the lens of 75 years ago and the events that led to the formation of the BJP as we know it,' recalls Aakar Patel.
The mother of a 13-year-old girl killed in a bomb explosion in West Bengal alleges that the Chief Minister is preventing a proper police investigation into her daughter's death, claiming the accused are roaming free.
In a significant move, 130 Dalit families in West Bengal were finally allowed to enter the Gidheshwar Shiv Temple after being barred for nearly three centuries due to caste discrimination. The families, who are primarily cobblers and weavers, had faced social and economic exclusion for their attempts to worship at the temple. Local authorities intervened after multiple rounds of discussions with village elders, temple servants, and political leaders, leading to a resolution of the long-standing dispute.
'The Bengali middle class, who never fully embraced Mamata Banerjee's policies, are now expressing their deep-seated frustration by spilling out on to the streets.'
Chowdhury said the schedule of the yatra was submitted to the state administration long ago.
Glimpses from around the world that will make you smile and cry.
The Delhi High Court refused to accept TMC MP Saket Gokhale's written apology in a defamation case against former diplomat Lakshmi Murdeshwar Puri, citing discrepancies and directing him to file a fresh one. The case involves allegations of defamatory utterances and financial impropriety.
Ajit Pawar, who heads the Nationalist Congress Party, which is in an alliance with pro-Hindutva BJP and the Shiv Sena, noted Chief Ministers Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Chandrababu Naidu (Andhra Pradesh) and Nitish Kumar (Bihar) -- all secular politicians -- aligned with the BJP for the sake of development of their respective states.
Her statement came after a controversy broke out that TMC MP Yusuf Pathan was forced to opt out of the multi-party diplomatic delegation.
Amid a war of words triggered by Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury's comments regarding seat-sharing in West Bengal, sources from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Thursday said they will give more time to ally Congress to sort out issues, adding the party is committed to the opposition bloc.
While the BJP went back to the drawing board to recraft its political and governance outreach and regained momentum by notching up surprisingly big wins in a string of assembly polls, the burst of fresh optimism in the main opposition Congress and other INDIA bloc parties fizzled out.
The violence, which erupted over the setting up of a shop in Maheshtala under Rabindranagar police station in South 24 Parganas district, quickly escalated, turning the area into a virtual battlefield.
Kalyan Banerjee claimed that Moitra, the Krishnanagar MP, was back in India after her honeymoon and started attacking him.
No politician should use such language, the Bharatiya Janata Party said on Friday as it chastised West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her choice of words targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
One hundred years ago, a group of 10 revolutionaries carried out an operation that shook the British Empire. Utkarsh Mishra revisits the 'Kakori Conspiracy Case', a turning point in the armed struggle for independence.
A woman died and four others were critical after the delivery of babies at a state-run hospital in West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district allegedly due to the administration of expired intravenous fluid, prompting the health department to order an investigation, officials said on Saturday.
In the aftermath of the violence, the police had arrested over 300 suspected miscreants in connection with over 60 FIRs which were lodged at various police stations in Murshidabad.
The bypolls were held in six constituencies - Naihati, Haroa, Medinipur, Taldangra, Sitai (SC), and Madarihat (ST) - following the resignation of MLAs who had vacated their assembly seats after securing victories in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Amid criticism over his absence from violence-hit Murshidabad in West Bengal, TMC leaders defended Baharampur MP Yusuf Pathan, saying he is "busy with the IPL." TMC sources expressed unhappiness with Pathan for not visiting the district during last week's communal clashes. Three people were killed in the clashes, which erupted during protests against recent amendments to the Waqf Act. The BJP seized the opportunity to criticize the ruling party, with Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar saying, "Bengal is burning under the indulgence of TMC leaders. But TMC MP Yusuf Pathan is busy sipping tea as Hindus get slaughtered. This is the true face of the TMC."
Counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections has begun across states and Union Territories, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar told PTI.
Malik had served as the 18th governor of Goa between November 3, 2019, and August 18, 2020.
The Sena-UBT pointed out that the Congress only spoke about itself in the Ahmedabad meet, and INDIA or Bharat was nowhere in the discussion.
An Indian delegation led by the BJP's Ravi Shankar Prasad will tour key European capitals to expose Pakistan's role in cross-border terrorism and State-sponsored extremism.
The CPI-M leader was the chief minister of the state from 2000 to 2011.
A year after a young woman doctor was raped and murdered in Kolkata, her parents express their disappointment with the investigation and their continued pursuit of justice.
BJP and RSS leaders are once again pushing to remove the words 'secular' and 'socialist' from the Constitution's Preamble, showing a deeper effort to change India's identity from a diverse, multi-religious republic to a Hindu-first nation, even though they don't have the numbers in Parliament to officially change the Constitution, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The West Bengal Congress unit issued a denial and said the state president meant "TMC and BJP are just the opposite sides of the same coin as both are venomous and spread lies".
Jagdeep Dhankhar's sudden resignation as Vice President has led to speculation about underlying political tensions and disagreements with the ruling alliance.
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.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, speaking at the University of Oxford, stressed the importance of inclusive development and stated that division in society is counterproductive. She emphasized that her governance model prioritizes the welfare of all sections of society and does not allow discrimination, highlighting the state's diverse population and the need for a human-centric approach.
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