Rescue officials confirmed casualties in the incident, claiming to have already recovered 5 bodies from the heap of debris where the cracker manufacturing unit once stood.
According to the sources, he wrote to TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee apprising her of his decision to resign from the party's primary membership.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday termed the cancellation of over 25,000 school jobs as 'gross injustice' and alleged that it was a ploy by the Bharatiya Janata Party to stop these job losers from being deployed in poll duty.
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 Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), an umbrella body of over 40 farmers' unions, on Friday urged agriculturists and other people of West Bengal not to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming elections.
The TMC chief has been complaining for long alleging that her rivals have brought in goons from other states to intimidate voters.
"We are ready to work with any anti-BJP party. This has been our stance whenever the need arose for a big movement against divisive forces from Kashmir to Kanyakumari," CPI-M politburo member Biman Bose told reporters to a question on whether the CPI-M will be with the TMC to prevent the BJP from coming to power in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
The cyclone expected to weaken gradually over the next two days.
The system lay centered at 5.30 am over Southeast Bay of Bengal, about 450 km west-northwest of Car Nicobar (Nicobar Islands), 380 km west of Port Blair (Andaman Islands), 970 km southeast of Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and 1030 km south-southeast of Puri (Odisha).
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.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday demanded the cancellation of the nomination of Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Suvendu Adhikari, who is pitted against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from Nandigram, as his name also 'seems to appear' in the electoral roll of Haldia constituency.
Announcing the first list of candidates, Left Front chairman Biman Bose said that of the 16 names announced, 14 are new, of whom three are women.
Nandigram today is a conglomeration of model villages fenced by its greenery.
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.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee campaigning in tribal Paschim Medinipur district on Thursday for the coming state election asked "Marxist friends" not to vote for either the CPI-M or Congress, who are "cohorts of the communal BJP".
The BJP could win only 16 out of 57 seats where Shah campaigned.
A 12-year-old girl was killed after she came in contact with a dangling live wire that got torn during the squall in Botanical Garden area in Howrah city, the police said.
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.
Among those killed were eight from TMC, and one worker each of the BJP, the CPI-M, the Congress and the ISF.
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.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday reviewed the post-cyclone situation and damages caused by Cyclone Yaas in the state at a meeting in Bhubaneswar where Odisha government demanded long term solutions to mitigate problems of repeated cyclones and provision of disaster resilient power systems.
I'm still in a lot of pain, but I feel the pain of my people even more,Banerjee tweeted minutes before arriving at the venue.
The brewing discontentment in the party may adversely impact the TMC's prospects in the next assembly polls due in April-May next year.
Though a pyrrhic victory for the BJP, the party he chose to align himself against his former mentor Banerjee, it nevertheless is being seen as a morale booster for the saffron party as his former party, the Trinamool Congress under Banerjee's leadership, has garnered an overwhelming 213 seats out of 292 seats which went to polls.
A Trinamool Congress delegation met the Election Commission (EC) on Friday and demanded a high-level probe into an alleged attack on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram and claimed it was not an 'unfortunate incident', but a conspiracy.
"I appeal to everyone to maintain peace. I hope to be back on the field in the next few days," Banerjee said.
Announcing the name of candidates for the West Bengal assembly polls, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said she will be contesting from the Nandigram constituency as announced earlier.
'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.
Alleging that the BJP-led Centre was pursuing 'vendetta politics', West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appealed to the Union government to withdraw its order recalling Chief Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay and allow the senior bureaucrat to work for people amid the COVID-19 crisis.
Amit Shah, who missed campaigning in Bihar, made a two-day trip to Bengal starting November 5 to oversee BJPs preparedness for the state polls.
Former Bengal pace spearhead Ashoke Dinda, who is fighting from the Moyna constituency in Purba Medinipur district, said the BJP desperately wants BCCI chief Sourav Ganguly to join the party.
It's a political gambit aimed at the BJP's Suvendu Adhikari who won the seat in 2016 as a TMC candidate, while also retroceding to the land movement that catapulted her to power.
'The TMC has become a private limited company.'
When the BJP forms government in Bengal, the chief minister will be a son of the soil, he said at the rally amid loud cheers from his supporters.
'It is very likely to move nearly northwards for next few hour and recurve slowly north-northeastwards along Narsapur, Yanam, Kakinada, Tuni and Visakhapatnam coasts during noon to evening on Wednesday and emerge into west central Bay of Bengal off North Andhra Pradesh coasts by night,' the India Meteorological Department said in its national bulletin.
'The power of love is the greatest power in the world.' 'Add a smile and you can conquer the world,' Bengali actor June Maliah, the Trinamool Congress's candidate for the Medinipur constituency, tells Swarupa Dutt/Rediff.com.
The MeT department warned of heavy to very heavy rainfall in Gangetic West Bengal till Saturday, ahead of Durga Puja festivities.
'You don't win elections on the basis of borrowed players.' 'There is a great crisis of leadership for the BJP in Bengal'
A quick look at the 66-year-old leader's political journey in the mid-1970s shows how injuries and physical assaults have shaped her political career over the years.
Forty-nine migrant workers have been inducted by the state government as members of its 'COVID-19 Warriors Club' to assist the coronavirus patients.
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