Making it clear that the SEZ policy has come to stay in the country, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said a humane and just policy on the resettlement of land oustees was being formulated by the government.
The meeting of the leaders is taking place at a time when the issue of Nandigram is yet to subside and there is concern among alliance partners over rising prices.
After violence in Nandigram, the Government has decided not to give further approvals for Special Economic Zones where acquisition of land is being resisted.
Not a single opposition party is saying it is against industrialisation and this reinforces our belief that people are not against industrialisation as a concept
While man and a woman were reported killed when trees came crashing down on them in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, a 13-year-old girl died in a similar incident in adjoining Howrah. No casualties have been reported from Odisha yet.
Initially reluctant to involve the CBI in the investigation on the ground that the central agency had not been able to make any headway into the Nandigram and Netai killings, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee later changed her stance, saying that the government was not averse to it.
Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah, who is on two-day visit to West Bengal to address the party cadre said at a rally that party wants a huge victory in the 2016 assembly elections in Kolkata.
'Between now and 2021, Bengal's politics could change irrevocably,' predicts Kanchan Gupta, Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation.
The Bengal CM said, The Narendra Modi government has created a situation in the entire country which is worse than Emergency.
In another display of the politics of threat in West Bengal, a ruling Trinamool Congress Member of Legislative Assembly openly threatened to "behead" a Congress leader in Birbhum district.
Pursuit of raw material had landed Bhushan Steel in the coal block allocation scam.
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.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said it had not been a correct decision to align with Congress in the 2011 assembly elections and accused the Congress of holding out the threat of the Central Bureau of Investigation "whenever there is a protest against the UPA government".
Allegations of strains on democratic and constitutional institutions across the board, security threats from outside, a greedy Opposition inside, were all a part of the package then as now, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Ruling Trinamool Congress on Friday staged protest rallies in West Bengal and burnt symbolic copies of the Centre's land ordinance, which it has described as 'black'.
What Roy is planning is not known. Will he side with the BJP, which he calls 'non-communal'? Or will he float a party? Or revive the Nationalist TMC to further his political career?
The overall average till 5 pm was 84.24 per cent.
A day after a Trinamool district president allegedly asked party men to attack the police with bombs and burn houses of Independent candidates, a TMC member of Parliament on Thursday asked party activists to "beat up Communist Party of India-Marxist workers with shoes".
In 2011, the Trinamool manifesto had said, the government would not allow SEZs in West Bengal, to protect multi-crop lands.
Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Bannerjee on Friday rubbished allegations of understanding between her and Bharatiya Janata Party, stating that she attended the IISCO programme along with Prime Minister Modi as it was related to the state's development.
Hitting out at the intellectuals attacking the Centre over "the climate of intolerance", they said a section of nation's intelligentsia was dismayed by Narendra Modi's victory in the Lok Sabha polls and "failure in the elections is now sought to be avenged by other means".
Why did such a 'socially conscientious' people adapt to cash-for-votes and the like, as fish to water? N Sathiya Moorthy offers an explanation.
West Bengal is yet to implement the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, the law that replaced the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, on January 1 this year.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday came down heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
From linking innovation with supply of inputs to providing contract farming, the private sector can help agriculture move to the next stage of development.
Trinamool Congress's slogan of 'Satatar Pratik' (symbol of honesty) has been challenged by BJP's slogan, 'Gali, gali mein shor hai, Mamata Banerjee chor hai'.
The 61-year-old feisty leader, who had single-handedly wrecked the red bastion in West Bengal in 2011, was unfazed by the Left-Congress alliance ahead of the assembly polls.
Narendra Modi was at the receiving end of 'neech (low-level)' barb again, this time from Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who berated his "insult" of Rajiv Gandhi and said such "low-level" thought and words do not suit him and national politics.
The writers, artistes, thinkers and academics had gathered for a "resistance" meet (Pratirodh) against what they described as "attack on reason, democracy and composite culture".
With her trademark cotton sari and rubber slippers and her generous doles in rural Bengal, many describe Mamata Banerjee as "ultra left."
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.
Mamata Banerjee was on Friday sworn in as the chief minister of West Bengal for the second consecutive time, heading a 42-member ministry.
Pulling no punches in her attack against the Bharatiya Janata Party for allegedly pursuing 'political vendetta' against the Trinamool Congress, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday charged that the Central Bureau of Investigation was being used as a 'political tool' by the National Democratic Alliance government and was functioning as 'a department of the Prime Minister's Office'.
The spectre of Singur and now its verdict is looming large on the future of many of Bengal's projects, especially the state government's industrial parks that are vacant. As many more episodes await, the question uppermost on everyone's minds is, how long will Singur haunt Bengal?
Investors can take heart from the first Cabinet meeting in the second innings.
The new ordinance on land acquisition will allow land grabbers to deprive millions, destroy agriculture, horticulture, rivers, forests, tree cover and mangroves to extract minerals as well as ground water, without replenishment at a pace that will not leave anything for the next generation, warns activist Medha Patkar.
'In this election -- her first major one since wresting power from the Left -- Mamata has proved that she has simply maintained the Left's systemic status quo by ensuring that she implements the CPI-M method of election and result 'management', says Dr Anirban Ganguly.
In Indian elections today, India's Chief Election Commissioner V S Sampath says, "Muscle Power has been replaced by 'Money Power,'" adding that the Election Commission's greatest dilemma is worrying about how the media can be prevented from influencing the outcome in the coming general election.
'The BJP suddenly seems vulnerable. This is not entirely surprising. In the past too, governments and leaders who won a thumping Lok Sabha majority lost popularity in a matter of months... The by-polls results shows that a degree of disenchantment with the Modi government is setting in,' says Praful Bidwai.
'The Left's decline is now a reality, both nationally and in West Bengal.'Behind it lie: Ideological rigidity and confusion, outdated party programmes... a socially conservative upper-caste leadership,' says Praful Bidwai.
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