An ambulance carrying a heart victim was held by the policemen waiting for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's convoy on an expressway to Kolkata on Wednesday, and was not allowed to go even when the patient's kin pleaded with folded hands.
Although the TMC, which controls nearly 80 per cent of the state's panchayats, has been at the receiving end of the public ire, the opposition BJP and the CPI-M have also faced protests in some areas over allegations of fraud related to the 'Amphan' aid delivery.
Abhishek warned that those who dared to challenge the TMC administration will have their eyes gouged out and their hands chopped off.
Laxman Chandra Seth, believed by the vast population of the area to have been the villain of the historic anti-farmland acquisition movement in 2007, said the two built their political careers by misleading the innocent people of Nandigram. Now their lies are back to haunt them.
Hundreds of people complained that they had to go without food and sleep in the aftermath of cyclone, which has wreaked havoc in Bengal, as their homes lay inundated amid heavy showers that continued to pummel several parts of the state.
IMD Director General Dr Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said that 'Yaas' is likely to intensify into a Very Severe Cyclonic Storm by Tuesday evening and Chandbali is likely to witness the maximum damage caused by it.
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'With sufficient gaps between polling dates, the BJP will have time to convert the 'fence-sitter' votes,' observes Payal Mohanka.
The Army was deployed in Kolkata and its neighbouring districts on Saturday, hours after the West Bengal government sought its help for immediate restoration of essential infrastructure and services in the state.
BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari filed his nomination on Friday from the Nandigram seat against his mentor-turned-adversary Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, and said he was '100 per cent' confident of his victory.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday filed her nomination for Nandigram assembly seat, where she will take on her former protege and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Suvendu Adhikari and exuded confidence of winning it saying she has never returned empty-handed from the land of anti-farm land acquisition movement.
TMC on a roll, wins 13 out of 17 zilla parishads in WB
The IMD has also issued a red-coded warning alert to the Odisha and West Bengal coasts.
An unspecified number of people were evacuated from coastal areas of Odisha where Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Bhadrak and Balasore were likely to experience heavy rainfall accompanied by high-velocity winds, particularly on May 19 and 20, IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said.
Neither do they have a no-objection certificate from the state nor any kind of Reserve Bank of India permission.
With the Trinamul government and NGOs stalling the Haripur nuclear plant, will the DAE allot the Russians another site elsewhere in India?
The UNICEF said an estimated 2.4 million children have been affected by the recent floods in the country.
Once a reviled practice in the state, both the parties seem to have endorsed a record number of turncoats this time -- triggering a wave of discontentment among their loyalists.
Amphan was the fiercest Cyclone to hit West Bengal in the last 100 years. A large part of the state was without power as electricity poles have been blown away. Mobile and internet services were also down as the cyclone has damaged hundreds of communication towers.
Results of the panchayat polls indicated a paradigm shift in state politics with the baton of main opposition party passing from the Left to the BJP.
It is a complete mayhem in West Bengal, Manipur and Odisha with more than 60 dead
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.
When the BJP forms government in Bengal, the chief minister will be a son of the soil, he said at the rally amid loud cheers from his supporters.
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 condition of the youth, who had slapped West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee at a rally on Sunday, was stated to be critical after he suffered multiple head injuries.
Sporadic violence marked the third phase of panchayat elections in West Bengal on Friday covering three districts of Howrah, North 24-Parganas and South 24-Parganas where an average 25 per cent polling was recorded in the first four hours of voting.
According to Mitra, items such as foodgrain, vegetables, leather goods, footwear, cottage cheese, puffed and flattened rice, books and entertainment tax, among several others, should be in the zero-tax bracket.
'The TMC has become a private limited company.'
The Trinamool Congress on Monday appeared set to sweep the crucial panchayat poll in West Bengal with a huge margin in most of the districts, taking a comfortable lead in gram panchayat in 12 of 17 districts.
The saffron party, which had witnessed unprecedented growth in terms of vote share and mass base over the last few years, had opened its doors wide for leaders from other parties as part of its poll strategy, but that did not go down well with many senior leaders, who had once locked horns with the newbies from rival camps, sources in the BJP said.
Twenty-three persons have died in flash floods in East and West Midnapore districts of West Bengal during the past two days, officials said. West Midnapore District Magistrate N S Nigam said 15 persons died in his district. All 15 deaths were reported from Sabang, Pingla and Narayangarh. Of these, Narayangarh alone accounted for 11 deaths.
As state minister Suvendu Adhikari, along with other functionaries, openly air grievances against the Mamata Banerjee-led dispensation, senior leaders are frantically looking for ways to pacify the rebels.
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.
This is the first time in many years that the BJP has been elected to the gram panchayat level in every district of the state.
Flood situation in south Bengal turned grim on Saturday with 1.19 lakh people taking shelter in relief camps in 12 districts of the state even as weatherman forecast more heavy rains in the next two days.
The Trinamool government, which cashed in on the Nandigram protests in West Bengal politics, has not yet given the Central Bureau of Investigation the sanction to prosecute five police officers involved in the 2007 police firing which killed 14 villagers.
Fourteen persons were killed in the firing on a demonstration against land acquisition on March 14, leading to a nationwide outrage and the Calcutta high court 'suo motu' ordering a CBI investigation.
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.
'The condition in Bengal is such that if you chant Jai Shri Ram, you would be put behind bars
After the discovery of graves at Bidyapit village at Khejuri and Talpati canal, another grave was found on Monday near the former Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee stronghold of Maheshpur in Nandigram, the police said.
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