Sonia Gandhi's prime ministerial ambition for her son has been a major factor in the Congress's internal politics since 2004, points out Amulya Ganguli.
'I can only say that it was a revenge killing. We have seen everything from inside our houses. We ran into our dwellings on hearing a mob approaching Sonu's house and hurling bombs. After that, I don't know anything'
Several politicians from West Bengal are under scrutiny for sheltering Jammat-e-Islami and Chaatra Shibir operatives, says a Intelligence Bureau note to the Home Ministry. Vicky Nanjappa reports
For the Congress to be taken seriously, it has to convince those around it that it could actually double its Lok Sabha seat share from the existing 52, and vote-share by a third more from the stagnating 20 per cent in 2014 and 2019, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
One person was killed and six others were injured in a clash between the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal's Birbhum district, police said.
Four people were allegedly killed in clashes between the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal's Purba Bardhaman district after the election results were announced, official sources said on Monday.
In Phase 6, indications are that the BJP, which is defending 40 seats, will lose in double digits and gain in single digits. Not good, if you are the ruling party scrambling to earn a working majority, with just one phase left to go, argues Prem Panicker.
Nandigram, 126 km south of Kolkata, is Suvendu Adhikari's bastion, where he has vowed to defeat Mamata Banerjee by 50,000 votes or quit politics.
A woman who had suffered burns in the petrol bomb attack in Bogtui village in Birbhum district last week died in a hospital on Monday, raising the toll to nine, a police officer said.
The TMC leader said all these moves were well calculated with the "ill intention to influence the voters" on the polling day.
Mamata Banerjee's sights are not on the next month's Presidential election. She is focusing on another election that will take place in 2024.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday urged the Election Commission to declare Trinamool Congress as a 'terrorist party', upping the ante against the ruling party after political clashes in Birbhum violence left three people dead.
A day after a Bharatiya Janata Party delegation met President Ram Nath Kovind seeking dismissal of the Mamata Banerjee government over the "political murder" of a party MLA, the West Bengal chief minister wrote a latter to him claiming the saffron party might have presented "distorted facts".
Violence had rocked West Bengal's rural polls on Saturday, leaving 15 people dead while ballot boxes were vandalised, ballot papers torched, and bombs thrown at rivals in several places.
In Tripura, the challenge for the chief minister is less from the alliance partners and more from his own party, the BJP.
West Bengal minister and veteran Trinamool Congress leader Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay is all set to vacate the Bhabanipur assembly seat on Friday as party supremo Mamata Banerjee is likely to contest bypoll from the constituency, party sources said.
Days after Bharatiya Janata Party MP Arjun Singh rejoined the Trinamool Congress, at least 20 saffron party leaders in West Bengal's Jalpaiguri have tendered their resignation together from their party posts, accusing the district leadership of taking money in lieu of inducting members in a local panel, a party functionary said on Wednesday.
Justice Jay Sengupta directed that the probe will be monitored by it and the SIT will file a progress report of the investigation on February 12, the next date of hearing in the case.
'For the politics of patronage in West Bengal, it has always been important to have territorial control.'
While the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress alleged that the killings were a fallout of the TMC's infighting, the ruling party pointed fingers at the grand old party of India.
Clashes were reported from Kharagpur in West Midnapore district, Narayanpur in North 24 Parganas, and Alipurduar town in north Bengal, among others.
In the first major test of popularity, the Trinamool Congress on Tuesday won the elections to three civic bodies and was leading in another while the Congress and Left Front major Communist Party of India-Marxist bagged one each in West Bengal.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday conducted raids in three locations in and around Kolkata and again recovered large stacks of cash from a flat linked to Arpita Mukherjee, considered a close associate of arrested West Bengal Industry Minister Partha Chatterjee.
Ghosh suffered minor injuries when a group of women allegedly attacked her when she tried to take one BJP agent inside a polling booth.
Sukanta Majumdar, the state BJP president, said, "Amit Shah has set a target of 35 seats. We will achieve that".
The repolling started at 7 am amid tight security with four central forces personnel deployed in each booth, besides state police. Till 11 am, 10.9 per cent voter turnout was recorded.
The vandalism at the prestigious university, founded by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, has snowballed into a major political row, after some ruling TMC supporters and varsity authorities filed police complaints against each other.
Banerjee also said she may not join the dharna being staged by Trinamool Congress MPs in protest against 'attack on party workers' in Tripura, but will surely express solidarity with them.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday deferred till July 11 the hearing on a batch of pleas challenging the remission granted last year to all the 11 convicts in the case of gang rape of Bilkis Bano and murder of her family members during the 2002 post-Godhra riots.
For the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's big move to push through his 'one-nation-one-election' concept promises to be the big ticket idea which can disrupt conventional calculations and allow it to frame the upcoming Lok Sabha polls along helpful lines as the party believes the issue has the potential to catch popular imagination.
The Congress plans to ensure that even if its candidates fail to register a win in the Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, the benefit should go to the Left Front and not to friend-turned-foe Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress. Renu Mittal reports.
TMC Rajya Sabha MP and leader of the party in the Upper House Derek O'Brien and Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Lok Sabha MP and leader of the party in the Lower House, have written to presiding officers of both Houses, urging then to wind up proceedings on Monday (March 23).
With the Trinamul government and NGOs stalling the Haripur nuclear plant, will the DAE allot the Russians another site elsewhere in India?
Gandhi came along with Mukherjee and while the former president left after sometime, the Congress chief offered to drop him back but Mukherjee politely refused.
Tiwari, who had rebelled against the TMC leadership but had mellowed down after the BJP declined to induct him into the party in December last year, joined the saffron camp in the presence of party state chief Dilip Ghosh at a programme in Sreerampur in Hooghly district.
Like, Share, Subscribe, Vote: The 2024 polls may be dubbed 'YouTube election'.
Police had to resort to lathi charge to disperse the crowd.
Though a pyrrhic victory for the BJP, the party he chose to align himself against his former mentor Banerjee, it nevertheless is being seen as a morale booster for the saffron party as his former party, the Trinamool Congress under Banerjee's leadership, has garnered an overwhelming 213 seats out of 292 seats which went to polls.
The Supreme Court on Monday fixed August 7 for the start of the final hearing on a batch of pleas challenging the remission granted last year to all the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano gang-rape case and murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
One person was critically injured after being hit by a bullet fired accidentally from a police revolver.
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