The Bharatiya Janata Party surprised many with its latest list of Lok Sabha candidates for West Bengal, nominating a protester from Sandeshkhali for the Basirhat constituency and changing the seats of its two incumbent MPs -- the party's former state chief Dilip Ghosh and ex-Union minister Debasree Chowdhury.
Violence erupted at the Tata Motors plant site in Singur on Sunday when police fired rubber bullets and teargas at Krishi Jami Rakhsha Committee activists when they hurled bombs and bricks in a bid to enter the area.
Clashes broke out between Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party supporters in West Bengal's Cooch Behar district after a public meeting addressed by Union Minister of State for Home Nisith Paramanik got over and a rally led by state minister Udayan Guha was about to begin nearby.
A Congress delegation led by the party's state unit chief Adhir Chowdhury was not allowed to enter trouble-torn Makra village in Birbhum district, which was made out of bounds for politicians by the Trinamool Congress government.
As part of the protest, BJP workers burned tyres, blocked roads, and closed shops in Nandigram, alleging that Trinamool Congress-backed criminals were responsible for the killing of Rathibala Arhi, a saffron party worker in Sonachura village.
A team of NIA officials earlier this morning arrested two persons in connection with the case and were on their way back to Kolkata, when the vehicle came under attack, they said.
Senior Congress leader and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee resigned as chief of party's West Bengal unit on Sunday citing "heavy government responsibilities", and Congress Legislature Party leader Manas Ranjan Bhunia was appointed to the post by Sonia Gandhi.
Sandeshkhali, a village in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, has been at the centre of a political storm for nearly a month and has witnessed unprecedented protests over allegations of sexual abuse by scores of women against a local Trinamool Congress leader.
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.
As the final five phases of polls draw closer, rift among Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) partners, Congress-Left combine and the Trinamool Congress, which are fighting separately has intensified, triggering a fierce contest across half of the remaining 36 constituencies in West Bengal driven by local issues such as Sandeshkhali and the SSC scam.
They then vandalised the premises, breaking CCTV cameras and locking the main gate before leaving, he said.
'It's dull because this time the election is spread over such a long period.'
In yet another jolt to the Bharatiya Janata Party, the party's Alipurduar district president, Ganga Prasad Sharma, joined the Trinamool Congress on Monday, as senior leader of the state's ruling party Mukul Roy, who also switched sides two weeks ago, claimed that this was the 'beginning of the saffron party's end' in the state.
The Bharatiya Janata Party dubbed the arrest as scripted and claimed he was in the safe custody of West Bengal Police.
District health officials said that these leaders are all associated with different hospitals as members of the Patients' Welfare Committees, making them eligible for the vaccination programme in the first round.
He was reviled by critics in his party as a neo-liberal in disguise but till the end, he retained his belief in secularism and the humanity of Communism.
Local women with sticks and brooms in their hands took out processions in different areas of Sandeshkhali as the protests intensified on the second day on Friday.
Banerjee is undergoing treatment at the SSKM Hospital for injuries on her left leg after she was allegedly pushed by unknown miscreants during campaign in Nandigram.
A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice P S Narasimha allowed Banerjee to avail available remedies under the law but refused to interfere with the May 18 order of the Calcutta high court.
The ruling Trinamool Congress on Thursday hailed the arrest of absconding party leader Shajahan Sheikh, accused of torturing villagers in trouble-torn Sandeshkhali area, and said it was possible only after the court cleared the decks and accused the opposition of exploiting the earlier 'embargo' on his arrest.
Santu Pan, who works for Republic Bangla news channel, was arrested on February 19 on the basis of a complaint by a woman alleging that he had trespassed into her house in Sandeshkhali.
The ED sealed the house and put up a notice summoning Sheikh to appear in person before its sleuths for questioning by January 29 in connection with its probe into the ration distribution scam, an officer said.
TMC's Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghose submitted a letter to the Election Commission on Thursday.
The CBI, tasked by the Calcutta high court to probe the case, received local court approval to conduct a polygraph test on the accused, days after performing a psychoanalysis test on him.
The home ministry also asked the state government to send details of the action taken following the attacks on the central probe agency teams, the sources said.
The naked body of a girl, who tried to save her father from being beaten by locals for failing to pay for a rented tractor at a village meeting and then refusing to follow a kangaroo court's order of licking spit, was found lying on railway tracks at Dhupguri in Jalpaiguri district.
Days after the prime accused in the arson and violence in Bengal's Bogtui village was found hanging in a temporary office of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the probe agency on Wednesday shifted the makeshift set up in Rampurhat to the metropolis, a senior official said.
Senior Trinamool Congress MP Sougata Roy on Friday stirred the hornet's nest by saying that the party will not accept the use of violence and muscle power by its candidates during the upcoming civic polls in West Bengal.
Another explosion "linked to illegal firecrackers" took place in West Bengal on Monday, the third such blast within a span of just seven days.
The accident occurred at 3.45 AM near Barabamboo, around 80 km from Jamshedpur, under the Chakradharpur Division of the South Eastern Railway (SER), they said.
The bench agreed to hear the plea on Friday and told Singhvi to ask his junior counsel to go to the mentioning officer.
A Sikh Indian Police Service officer, who was deputed at Dhamakhali to prevent senior West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party leader Suvendu Adhikari from visiting restive Sandeshkhali in North 24 Parganas district, got agitated after a group of activists of the saffron party allegedly hurled the 'Khalistani' jibe at him.
The 14-year political journey of Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra has encountered both upheaval and elevation, as her expulsion from Parliament in a cash-for-query case marked the culmination of her tumultuous parliamentary term.
The governor assured the "tortured" women, who tied rakhis on his wrist, all help to get justice.
The unrest in the Sandeshkhali region of West Bengal ballooned into a major political row on Thursday as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee blamed the saffron camp of fomenting trouble in the area, while the Bharatiya Janata Party and the National Commission for Women (NCW) accused her party Trinamool Congress and the state government of being complicit in crimes against women in the area.
Experts of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Delhi, who arrived here on Friday, collected samples from the place of occurrence in Bogtui village, which is almost deserted following the gruesome incident on the night of March 21.
While Tripura unit of TMC described it as an "attack on democracy" and said they were confined to their hotel by the police, Manik Das, Superintendent of Police, West Tripura, claimed members of the 22-member I-Pac team are being questioned in a Agartala city-based hotel, as part of a routine check-up.
The CAA, enacted by the BJP-led government at the Centre in 2019, aims at granting Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants, including Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan who entered India before December 31, 2014.
The BJP senior leadership believes the YSRCP is a more reliable potential ally post-2024 Lok Sabha election than the TDP.
Three persons, including husband of a Communist Party of India-Marxist candidate, were killed on Monday and several others injured in violence during the second phase of panchayat elections in West Bengal where 75 per cent polling was recorded.
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