The cyclone expected to weaken gradually over the next two days.
West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Tuesday stirred fresh controversy by saying 'ego prevailed over public service' on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee skipping Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting to review post-cyclone damages on May 28.
Branding Trinamool Congress rebels as 'traitors' like Mir Jafar, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday took a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party for fielding the turncoats in the polls leaving saffron party old-timers shed tears.
The system lay centered at 5.30 am over Southeast Bay of Bengal, about 450 km west-northwest of Car Nicobar (Nicobar Islands), 380 km west of Port Blair (Andaman Islands), 970 km southeast of Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and 1030 km south-southeast of Puri (Odisha).
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.
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.
According to the sources, he wrote to TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee apprising her of his decision to resign from the party's primary membership.
The Trinamool Congress chief has slight fever and has been shifted to aspecial ward at the hospital's VVIP Woodburn Block soon after the MRI at the Bangur Institute of Neurosciences, he added.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday carried out simultaneous raids at the houses of around a dozen people, including two ministers, in connection with its investigation into the teacher recruitment scam and seized huge amounts of cash.
Suvendu Adhikari, the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate against Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram, Monday said he has sought rejection of the nomination of the West Bengal chief minister for not declaring six criminal cases against her while filing her papers.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has found the report submitted by the West Bengal government on the alleged attack on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram on March 10 as 'sketchy' and asked Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay to elaborate it, a poll official said.
Protests were held in different parts of Kolkata, North 24 Parganas, Hooghly, Howrah, Birbhum, South 24 Parganas, Jalpaiguri districts, and Trinamool Congress supporters briefly blocked roads in some areas.
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.
Posters projecting West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as an 'outsider' surfaced in Nandigram on Wednesday, the high-profile constituency from where the Trinamool Congress supremo filed her nomination for the assembly polls.
The BJP, which has emerged as the main opposition party in West Bengal after winning 77 seats in the assembly polls last year, failed to win even a single civic body.
TMC claimed that the new instructions were made with a "mala fide intention to benefit the candidates of Bharatiya Janata Party".
The TMC chief has been complaining for long alleging that her rivals have brought in goons from other states to intimidate voters.
"I was standing outside my car with the door open. I was going to a temple there to offer my prayers. Few people came around my car and pushed the door. The door hit my leg," she said.
The union minister went to the residence of Sanatan Singh at Balijhuri and had lunch there, sitting on the floor of the thatched house.
Banerjee said the state is targeting to shift at least 10 lakh people to safer places in a bid to avoid any loss of life.
The MeT department warned of heavy to very heavy rainfall in Gangetic West Bengal till Saturday, ahead of Durga Puja festivities.
"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.
The words 'industry', 'industrial development', 'jobs', and 'employment' have been ringing with higher frequency since Mamata Banerjee stepped into her third term with landslide victory after a high-octane election last year. "Our government's next target is industrial development," the chief minister (CM) had been heard stating at different public meetings in the past few months - perhaps setting the tone for the sixth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) slated for later this month. Investor summits by any state are about intent, big numbers, and tall claims. Yet in competitive federalism, its importance as a marketing tool is undeniable.
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.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday alleged that 'Bhatija (nephew) and company' had swindled central funds sent for Amphan relief and said that probe will be ordered into it and culprits will be booked after the Bharatiya Janata Party comes to power in West Bengal.
Two days after being admitted to state-run SSKM Hospital in Kolkata with severe bone injuries, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was discharged from the medical establishment on Friday evening after doctors found her recovery to be 'satisfactory'.
She faced off against former disciple-turned-defector Suvendu Adhikari in a very different contest. It's not land acquisition, but an ego clash that has acquired, tragically, communal overtones, explains Kanika Datta.
In his reply, Bandyopadhyay said that as per the directive of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, he left the meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a review of Cyclone Yaas ravaged Digha, a popular sea resort town in Purba
"We are ready to work with any anti-BJP party. This has been our stance whenever the need arose for a big movement against divisive forces from Kashmir to Kanyakumari," CPI-M politburo member Biman Bose told reporters to a question on whether the CPI-M will be with the TMC to prevent the BJP from coming to power in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
The world organisation said UN humanitarians and partners were working hard to assist the people of Bangladesh and India suffering from the impact of the cyclone, which made landfall on Wednesday, wreaking havoc, causing high tidal surges, flooding and embankments to collapse.
The BJP could win only 16 out of 57 seats where Shah campaigned.
West Bengal and Odisha have evacuated lakhs of people from vulnerable areas to safety as severe cyclonic storm 'Yaas' is nearing the coast and is expected to make landfall near Dhamra Port in Bhadrak district early on Wednesday morning.
All eyes are on battleground Nandigram that is goin to the polls on Thursday with the chief minister engaged in a fierce contest with her protege-turned-rival Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP.
"I say I am a 'big donkey' (Ami ekta boro gadha) for having failed to recognise them. I dont know (about it), but people say their 'empire' is worth Rs 5,000 crore and they will use money to buy votes. But don't vote for them," Banerjee told the rally.
Dedicating the party's victory to the people of West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said voters had "paid back" the BJP for its "arrogance of power".
Among the names being mentioned for inclusion as ministers are Tejasvi Surya, the 29-year-old MP from Bangalore South, Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, the 35-year-old MP from Ladakh, Locket Chatterjee, the 45-year old MP from Hooghly, and Dilip Ghosh, MP from West Medinipur and president of the BJP's West Bengal unit.
The prime minister telephoned Banerjee to take stock of the flood situation in West Bengal, and assured the chief minister of all central assistance to mitigate it, the bureaucrat said.
'The TMC has become a private limited company.'
Former Bengal pace spearhead Ashoke Dinda, who is fighting from the Moyna constituency in Purba Medinipur district, said the BJP desperately wants BCCI chief Sourav Ganguly to join the party.
The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), an umbrella body of over 40 farmers' unions, on Friday urged agriculturists and other people of West Bengal not to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming elections.
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