Sporadic incidents of violence were reported on Tuesday in some areas where voting is underway in the third phase of the West Bengal assembly elections, even as the overall situation by and large remained peaceful with 34.71 per cent turnout recorded till 11 am, officials said.
Social stigma and low testing are the key reasons for the high mortality rate among COVID-19 patients in West Bengal, where the disease, like elsewhere in the country, is still an urban phenomenon, experts say. The state's Trinamool Congress government has been drawing consistent criticism from the Centre and opposition parties over the way it has tackled the pandemic, and has been accused of under-reporting data about the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
The TMC chief has been complaining for long alleging that her rivals have brought in goons from other states to intimidate voters.
35 districts have been reporting high active COVID-19 caseload and fatality rate. These 35 districts comprise all 11 districts in Delhi, Kolkata, Howrah, North 24 Parganas and 24 South Parganas in West Bengal; Pune, Nagpur, Thane, Mumbai, Mumbai Suburban, Kolhapur, Sangli, Nashik, Ahmednagar, Raigad, Jalgaon, Solapur, Satara, Palghar, Aurangabad, Dhule and Nanded in Maharashtra; Surat in Gujarat; Pondicherry in Puducherry and East Singhbhum in Jharkhand.
Those leaving were mostly engaged as masons, maids and housekeepers in the country, another BSF official said.
Riding a scooter, Union minister Smriti Irani led a rally of the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday as she campaigned for the upcoming West Bengal elections in the South 24 Parganas district.
The union minister went to the residence of Sanatan Singh at Balijhuri and had lunch there, sitting on the floor of the thatched house.
Famous clay modeller Mintu Pal is sculpting the fibreglass idol at his Kumartuli studio draping the 'deity' in the Trinamool Congress supremo's favourite white coloured tant saree and her trademark flip-flop slippers to boot.
Harsh Vardhan said that 51 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses will be made available by July and 216 crore more between August and December.
The state government, however, has not sent any report as sought by the Union home ministry on "serious security lapses" during Nadda's two-day visit to West Bengal.
"I appeal to everyone to maintain peace. I hope to be back on the field in the next few days," Banerjee said.
Over one crore voters in West Bengal will decide the political fate of 342 candidates on Saturday, when 45 assembly constituencies go to polls in the fifth phase, amid a raging second wave of COVID-19.
The MP, wearing a blood-soaked shirt and a bandage on head, said that Verma led a police contingent which attacked a "peaceful" protest by the BJP over the capture of its party office at Shyamnagar.
'I welcome Droupadi Murmu as the first Adivasi woman President of India, but her track record has not been good as a politician and governor of Jharkhand when it came to helping Adivasis,' points out activist Gladson Dungdung.
Money, apparently, doesn't matter in a place where service is not a dogma but a way of life.
From small restaurants to mighty software companies, it is businesses, not the government, that create jobs. Yet, in a cruel irony, they have to fight extortive and brutal State power every step of the way, says Debashis Basu.
Questioning the eight-phase assembly elections in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Friday that she suspects that the dates were announced as per the suggestions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah for better management of the BJP's poll campaign.
Moved by the plight of those affected by the natural calamity, Indian archer Rahul Banerjee immersed himself in relief work for victims of cyclone Amphan.
Senior TMC leader Subrata Mukherjee sought to know if it was an attempt by the BJP to divert attention from 'the historic launch' of the ruling party's report card.
The byelections are of critical importance to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who lost the assembly poll to Bharatiya Janata Party's Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram.
Several saffron party workers clashed with the police, when they were stopped from gheraoing candidates who were about to enter the party office to meet their seniors.
IT services giant Infosys will start construction of a proposed software development centre in the metropolis by July 2021, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Tuesday. The project will generate massive employment in the IT sector, she said after a cabinet meeting at the state secretariat.
In the sixth case of suicide in connection with the collapsed chit fund company Saradha, a depositor, who had invested his money in the scam-ridden company on Friday committed suicide in South 24 Parganas district.
An unspecified number of people were evacuated from coastal areas of Odisha where Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Bhadrak and Balasore were likely to experience heavy rainfall accompanied by high-velocity winds, particularly on May 19 and 20, IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said.
Addressing a press conference in Siliguri as part of the BJP's 'Shahid Samman Yatra', Union minister John Barla said he would discuss the issue at the appropriate level to bring to fruition for creating a separate state.
The division bench said it deemed it appropriate to stay the special court's order and direct that the "accused person shall be treated to be in judicial custody till further orders".
She was kidnapped by child traffickers when she was 14. Today, this 17 year old wants to become a lawyer so that she can help the survivors of such henious acts.
Amphan was the fiercest Cyclone to hit West Bengal in the last 100 years. A large part of the state was without power as electricity poles have been blown away. Mobile and internet services were also down as the cyclone has damaged hundreds of communication towers.
A day after Cyclone Yaas tore through coastal Odisha and Bengal to cause havoc as far as Jharkhand, tornadoes, torrential rains, bridge collapses and swelling rivers continued to plague eastern India as people tried to pick up their lives amid the debris of swept away mud homes and swamped farmlands.
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.
Bengal ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee were taken to the Central Bureau of Investigation office on Monday in connection with the Narada sting operation, officials said.
In Bihar, where a bandh had been called, a railway station and a police vehicle were torched, an ambulance attacked and security personnel injured in stone-pelting incidents on the fourth consecutive day of the agitation, while protesters vandalised Ludhiana railway station in Punjab and blocked roads and rail tracks in West Bengal, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh.
Though the BJP is running too close for comfort, populist schemes and support among Muslims may help Mamata Banerjee overcome the challenge, observes Aditi Phadnis.
A graduate by education, Santanu, the eldest son of former Trinamool Congress minister Manjul Krishna Thakur, was more into the development of the Matuas through various social services run by the Thakurbari in Thakurnagar and was never into politics.
A high voter turnout was recorded in West Bengal, Assam Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry assembly elections on Tuesday. The massive polling exercise following COVID-19 health protocol and involving lakhs of personnel began at 7 am and the last hour from 6 pm to 7 pm was set aside for COVID-19 patients and those under isolation. The counting of votes in the states will be held on May 2.
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.
'Technology is streamliming the entire process of aid distribution and making it transparent and digital.'
Locket Chatterjee, BJP MP from Hooghly, has threatened that the last rites will be done on the roads if the police don't allow them to move forward.
Modi reviewed the situation in West Bengal and Odisha with chief ministers Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik, two days after the cyclone, the worst in years, devastated their states.
After conducting an aerial survey of some of the affected areas and attending a review meeting along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Basirhat in North 24 Parganas district, she said there is a need to work together at this hour of crisis.
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