'The Shaheen Bagh model of bullets and biryani won't work. The RSS looked at a template that would play to Bengali pride and harp on the state's development. Mamata's slogan to defeat the Left Front was 'Bengal awake and arise'. She promised to check the flight of capital from Bengal to far-flung states and usher in a renaissance. The RSS wants the BJP to pitch this line because it feels Mamata hasn't delivered on her promises.'
The Congress quickly hit back accusing TMC of being a 'stooge of BJP' and challenged it to prove its credentials on a 'pan India' platform.
The Opposition unity to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to have run into rough weather as the Trinamool Congress and the Congress are at daggers drawn over the recent instances of 'poaching' by the Mamata Banerjee-led camp, with the grand old party finding itself in a tight spot.
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.
A huge controversy erupted on Sunday amid the polling for 30 assembly seats in West Bengal, with the Bharatiya Janata Party releasing an audio clip where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is purportedly heard cajoling a BJP leader from Nandigram to rejoin the Trinamool Congress and help her win the seat.
"The death knell of Mamata Banerjee's regime has rung. We will form the next government in Bengal with a two-third majority," he added.
Trivedi's resignation came amidst the exodus from Mamata Banerjee's party ahead of the West Bengal assembly poll.
The BJP has decided to revamp the organisation by rewarding efficient party workers and leaders and remove several turncoats from local and district levels.
In a fillip to the West Bengal unit of the BJP ahead of the 2021 assembly elections, Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be on a two-day visit to the state from November 5 to take stock of the party's organisational matters, sources said.
The Trinamool Congress has decided not to support Congress nominees, if any, in the Rajya polls in West Bengal and has renominated party members of Parliament and Union minister Mukul Roy while giving tickets to three journalists.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday called up Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee after which the key United Progressive Alliance ally decided to attend a meeting of the ruling coalition in Delhi on July 14.
As the BJP activists jostled to reach the Bowbazar crossing in the city, police resorted to firing tear gas shells and water cannons to disperse them.
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.
An angry Nadda called the attack 'unprecedented' and alleged the state has slipped into 'complete lawlessness and goonda raj'. He also said the violence reflected the 'frustration' of the Mamata Banerjee government. West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee insinuated the attack was staged.
Naturally, the West Bengal chief minister is not leaving anything to chance, reports Ishita Ayan Dutt.
Adhikari, the face of the Nandigram movement that catapulated Mamata Bannerjee to power in 2011, sent his resignation letter to the chief minister by fax, which he then forwarded to Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar by e-mail.
Faced with prospect of its assets across the globe being seized just like Pakistan and Venezuela, the government decided to scrap retrospective taxation but the international embarrassment could have been avoided had 'attached' shares of Britain's Cairn Energy Plc not been sold, according to tax and legal experts. On Thursday, the government introduced a Bill in Parliament to scrap the tax rule that gave the tax department power to go 50 years back and slap capital gains levies wherever ownership had changed hands overseas but business assets were in India. The 2012 legislation was used to levy a cumulative of Rs 1.10 lakh crore of tax on 17 entities, including UK telecom giant Vodafone, but substantial punitive action was taken only in the case of Cairn.
Twelve Trinamool Congress leaders including Mukul Roy and Madan Mitra have been booked by the Central Bureau of Investigation for alleged criminal conspiracy and corruption in the Narada sting case wherein they were purportedly filmed while taking money.
If the TMC doesn't stop violence, then the children of TMC workers would become orphans, he said.
Shah, who was accompanied by BJP national vice-president Mukul Roy, national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargya, was greeted with slogans of 'Amit Shah zindabad', 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' by party workers at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata.
Left high and dry, the BJP has had no option but to go for the overkill with 800 rallies, including 20 by the prime minister. In the process, it may be overplaying its card, observes Amulya Ganguli.
State transport and sports minister Madan Mitra -- whose name has reportedly propped up in CBI investigation in Saradha -- and textile minister Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, who was earlier quizzed by ED in this case, are now at the receiving end of a public snub of the party leadership.
'They are our go-to men, our trouble-shooters.' 'They draw their strength from remaining low-key and accessible only to our workers.'
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Thousands of BJP workers from Kolkata and Howrah began marching towards Nabanna to protest the "worsening" law and order in the state.
Former Trinamool Congress MP Kunal Ghosh also appeared before the probe agency in Meghalaya.
Syed Ahmed Bukhari, now on the side of two leading ladies -- Mamata Banerjee and Mayawati -- thinks Anna Hazare ditched the Bengal chief minister, resulting in the poor turnout at Didi's Delhi rally on Wednesday.
The proposed amalgamation will make Bank of Baroda, which will merge the other two lenders with itself, the second largest public sector bank after State Bank of India in place of Punjab National Bank.
Will the external affairs minister's foreign travels end up affecting his chances at the hustings?
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With two years to go before West Bengal elects its next government, the BJP's internal objective is to scale down the Trinamool Congress tally from 211 to 45 seats. This amounts to an annihilation of the TMC while enabling the BJP to win a record 250 seats in the 295-member legislature, reports Radhika Ramaseshan
'Mamata did not stand up for those who suffered owing to the chit fund scam, but only stood up for Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar because he has all the knowledge about the chit fund case.'
Trinamool Congress MPs accused the Modi government of having imposed a "super emergency" by launching the exercise and engaging in "vendetta politics" by arresting two party lawmakers after it opposed the "draconian" move.
The government is selling its entire 100 per cent stake in Air India but wants effective control to stay with Indian nationals.
While, the BJP accused the ruling TMC of orchestrating his killing, the charge was rubbished by the party.
'If the chief minister says there are areas in her home state where she cannot enter, where has she driven the state to!'
As Rose Valley resurfaces, Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Tapas Pal's arrests marks the end of the bonhomie between the TMC and BJP.
About 17 lakh investors, mostly in West Bengal, who have lost crores of rupees in the Saradha chit fund scam are fast losing hope. The scandal continues to roil West Bengal political circles with several ruling Trinamool Congress leaders being implicated and some arrested. Even West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's name has been dragged into the sordid mess. Indrani Roy presents a FAQ on what the scam is about and the main players behind it.
'The TMC did not bother telling me, a sitting MLA for 20 years, why I was not being given a ticket.'
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