West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday that at least 72 people have died due to Cyclone Amphan and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit the affected districts and provide help to 'rebuild those areas from scratch'
'There is no audience anymore for my graphic novels. Few people seem interested in what I find interesting,' Sarnath Banerjee tells Uttaran Das Gupta.
'At the heart of the strategic relationship between our countries are economic ties.'
Polling will be held in all 13 seats in Punjab and an equal number of seats in Uttar Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, eight seats each in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, four in Himachal Pradesh, three in Jharkhand and the lone seat Chandigarh.
The entire coastal region of Odisha has been experiencing rainfall since Friday night.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday met his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal at the latter's residence in New Delhi and extended 'complete support' to him in the Aam Aadmi Party government's ongoing tussle with the Centre over the control of administrative services.
The IMD has also issued a red-coded warning alert to the Odisha and West Bengal coasts.
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.
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.
With normal life thrown out of gear by the region's worst weather disasters, the authorities scrambled in various parts of the state to restore normalcy.
Mohammed Shami was ruled out of the rubber, starting Tuesday, late on Saturday night after he tested positive for COVID-19.
A four-member team of the Union home ministry, tasked with looking into reasons for the post-poll violence in West Bengal, met Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar at the Raj Bhavan.
Railway officials also indicated that possible 'sabotage' and tampering with the electronic interlocking system, which detects the presence of trains, led to the Friday accident.
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.
The desecration of Vidyasagar's statue during Amit Anilchandra Shah's rally, which the TMC projected to be a 'Bhojpuri' and 'Dhokla' invasion on West Bengal's culture, may help her gain some favour with middle-class and erudite Bengalis in the last phase of the polls.
'Yaas' is likely to cross the Odisha-West Bengal coasts between Paradip and Sagar Islands around noon on May 26 as a very severe cyclonic storm with wind speeds of 155-165 kmph, Kolkata's Regional Meteorological Centre Deputy Director Sanjib Bandopadhyay said.
As many as 12 teams were deployed and five teams were on standby in West Bengal while additional teams are also in readiness if required.
It's a busy season for Indian producers of orthodox tea. As Sri Lanka, the world's largest supplier of orthodox tea, struggles with its worst economic crisis, a window of opportunity has opened up in neighbouring India. Calls to Indian planters and exporters from foreign buyers of Sri Lankan orthodox tea are pouring in and the buoyant sentiment is reflecting in prices at auction centres. Orthodox tea refers to loose-leaf tea which is produced using traditional or orthodox methods such as plucking, withering, rolling, oxidation and drying.
The system moved north-northeastwards at 20 kmph in the last six hours and is over west-central Bay of Bengal, 90 km from Gopalpur, 120 km from Puri and 210 km from Paradip, the weather office said in its 11.30 am bulletin.
The plan, chalked by the West Bengal government and CTC, envisages ferry services on the Ganges between Barrackpore in North 24 Parganas and Babu Ghat in Kolkata.
A POCSO court in North 24 Parganas district recently sentenced four persons to 20 years in jail and two others to 10 years in connection with the case of the woman who is now 22 years old.
Mithali Raj-led India will take on Meg Lanning's Australia at the WACA ground in Perth from September 30 in what will be only the second day-night Test in women's cricket.
Protestors continued to target railway properties in Bihar and West Bengal on Saturday to vent their ire against the Agnipath defence recruitment scheme disrupting train services in the eastern region for the fourth day in a row, while demonstrations were held on roads in Odisha and Jharkhand.
On Tuesday, an army deserter and active member of Bangladesh's Jamaitul-Islami-Mujahiddin was arrested at Petropole on the border in North 24 Parganas district by the BSF.
The alleged mastermind in the Kolkata techie kidnap case and his two other associates were arrested on Wednesday and Rs 1.90 lakh paid as ransom was also recovered by the police.
'Gangubai required Alia to change her body language, voice, even the look in her eyes.' 'I threw the challenge at her and she was more than up to it.'
Normal life in West Bengal was partially affected on Friday due to the 12-hour state-wide bandh called by the Left Front in protest against police action on its activists during their march towards state secretariat Nabanna.
Iconic leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were among her fans.
Alstom Power President Phillippe Joubert told reporters the Salt Lake facility would supply high-value engineering skills to projects executed not only in India, but also in North America and Europe. \n
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.
A great intensity earthquake of 7.6 magnitude on Richter scale struck off the Andaman and Nicobar islands today, Indian Meteorological Department said.
Lakhs of people were rendered homeless as cyclone Amphan cut a path of destruction through half a dozen districts of West Bengal, including state capital Kolkata, Wednesday night, blowing away shanties, uprooting thousands of trees besides swamping low-lying areas.
After Kochi, the City of Joy witnessed its own 'Kiss of Love' edition by students of two universities to protest moral policing and promote gender sensitisation.
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.
'It's this swag and body language that convinces you that he can pound 10 men to dust with his bare fists.'
'We are in constant touch with the central and West Bengal governments, but the situation is fluid and very little information is trickling in from Afghanistan. Phone lines are jammed and visuals from Kabul are disturbing. Those living in India are distraught'
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.
All the winners in the assembly bypolls were from the respective ruling parties.
Gale-force winds, heavy rainfall and high tidal waves swept the coastal belts of Maharashtra and Goa as Cyclone Tauktae hurtled northwards towards Gujarat.
Principal Secretary of the state health department Bibek Kumar, in his letter to the secretary of the Union ministry of health and family welfare on Friday, described the list as "an erroneous assessment" and said Bengal, keeping in view the parameters set by the Centre, has earmarked four "red" zones -- Kolkata, Howrah, North 24 Parganas and East Midnapore.
