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.
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.
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.
Harsh Vardhan said that 51 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses will be made available by July and 216 crore more between August and December.
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.
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.
"I appeal to everyone to maintain peace. I hope to be back on the field in the next few days," Banerjee said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Money, apparently, doesn't matter in a place where service is not a dogma but a way of life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
Political commentators say the final outcome of the West Bengal assembly elections would depend on how some crucial factors play out this time. Mayank Mishra explains.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The weatherman said when 'Amphan' makes the landfall between West Bengal's Digha, some 180 km from Kolkata, and Hatiya island in Bangladesh on Wednesday afternoon or evening, it will pack sustained wind speed of 155 to 165 kmph, gusting at 185 kmph. The gale-force wind, blowing at a speed of 240 to 250 kmph and gusting to 275 kmph at one point, had lost intensity and was moving at a speed of 200 to 210 kmph, gusting to 230 kmph on Tuesday evening.
'Technology is streamliming the entire process of aid distribution and making it transparent and digital.'
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.
In a first such action in India's electoral history, the Election Commission had Wednesday ordered campaigning in the nine West Bengal constituencies to end at 10 pm on Thursday, instead of 6 pm on Friday, in the wake of violence between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Trinamool Congress in Kolkata during Amit Shah's roadshow.
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.
State Chief Secretary Malay Kumar De wrote that 'firm and appropriate actions' were initiated in all cases of violence without any delay.
Sixteen more bodies were found during search operations on Monday, taking the toll to 41 in the trawler capsize mishap near Talpatty island in the Hooghly river in South 24 Parganas district. "Sixteen more bodies were recovered, but the toll is likely to rise as there is a possibility of recovering more bodies," said South 24 Parganas District Magistrate N S Nigam.
