Union Home Minister Amit Shah directed BJP leaders to intensify grassroots outreach in West Bengal, setting performance benchmarks for the upcoming state elections. He emphasized party unity and the importance of booth-level workers.
The Congress party has strongly criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks regarding the dropping of stanzas from 'Vande Mataram' in 1937, calling his statements shameful and demanding an apology. The party argues that Rabindranath Tagore himself suggested adopting the first two stanzas of the song.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee criticizes Delhi Police for referring to Bengali as 'Bangladeshi national language,' sparking political controversy.
'When India opened its doors to the world, moving away from an agrarian to a market economy, everything, whether life or love, was commodified.'
Disgruntled West Bengal minister Rabindranath Bhattacharya, who has refused to take up his new ministerial assignment, on Tuesday stoked the 'cut money' debate, urging Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to tackle corruption in party ranks.
The people of Singur feel they have lost their representative in the government who would plead the issue of fast-tracking the process of returning their land, which seems to be a distant reality, with the battle being fought in the courts.
The Trinamool Congress on Tuesday demanded from the West Bengal government that 300 acres of land should be given from within the Tata Motors project area in Singur to "unwilling farmers".
Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Sunday night formally announced suspension of the 15-day indefinite dharna, saying a final agreement has been arrived at by the West Bengal government on the Singur issue."Since the government has found a formula for the solution of the Singur issue officially, I am suspending the dharna," she said from the dharna manch, addressing a big gathering of cheering party supporters.She thanked Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi.
Violence erupted at the Tata Motors plant site in Singur on Sunday when police fired rubber bullets and teargas at Krishi Jami Rakhsha Committee activists when they hurled bombs and bricks in a bid to enter the area.
West Bengal minister Bachchu Hansda and Tehatta MLA Gouri Sankar Dutta joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday after being denied nominations for the assembly polls by the Trinamool Congress.
The Trinamool Congress on Monday lost five more sitting MLAs and the control of the Malda Zilla Parishad to the Bharatiya Janata Party as defections continued to rock West Bengal's ruling party ahead of the assembly polls.
The CPI-M leader was the chief minister of the state from 2000 to 2011.
Former West Bengal chief minister and a front-ranking Marxist leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will go down in the country's history as a pragmatic communist who kept aside his ideological convictions to woo capital for the industrialisation of his state.
'What did we get out of this agitation? Nothing... Now we feel it was all a mistake. We have no work, and our land has turned infertile. We are living in abject poverty'
However, a few defectors, who joined the BJP, got the better of their TMC rivals, including Suvendu Adhikari who emerged as a proverbial giant slayer, by defeating Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee albeit by a narrow margin.
'The TMC did not bother telling me, a sitting MLA for 20 years, why I was not being given a ticket.'
Actor-turned-politician and sitting MP Locket Chatterjee has been fielded from Chunchura and another MP Nishit Parmanik from Dinhata. Also, a number of film personalities have been nominated as candidates in the high-stakes battle for West Bengal.
'Holding on to superstardom is far more difficult than the struggle to get there.'
Union minister Subhas Sarkar courted a controversy on Wednesday with his remarks that Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's mother did not cradle him in her arms when he was a child because of his "not so fair complexion"
'I did get a ticket, but getting nominated isn't enough.' 'The people in Habibpur, my own party workers, are my opponents.' 'Is it possible to win?'
The BJP could win only 16 out of 57 seats where Shah campaigned.
As state minister Suvendu Adhikari, along with other functionaries, openly air grievances against the Mamata Banerjee-led dispensation, senior leaders are frantically looking for ways to pacify the rebels.
Banerjee also said that no reason was cited for the tableau's rejection, a decision, which she said had 'pained' people.
Had he not taken his final curtain call on April 23, 1992, Satyajit Ray would still, undoubtedly, have been making movies.
'My children -- Saif, Saba and Soha -- have been located in Mumbai for a while now.' 'In our case, it's the house more than me that keeps the family close.' 'All three of my children love Pataudi; they come to Delhi and head straight there.'
Readers Suman and Sumana Bhattacharya met the actress at a Tagore reading.
'He made me feel like a crorepati even without sitting in the hot seat.'
Once a reviled practice in the state, both the parties seem to have endorsed a record number of turncoats this time -- triggering a wave of discontentment among their loyalists.
It goes way beyond a fantastic team!
'So much so we don't feel the need to create anything, but just bask in that glory.' 'It's time to move on.' 'How much burden can you put on a person or the legacy of the person?'
Aseem Chhabra lists his favourite Indian films of 2021.
The 91-year-old went beyond her role as a writer to help tribals in organising themselves in groups so that they could take up development activities in their own areas.
Anwesha Bhattacharya-Arya writes an open letter to the President on the sorry state of affairs in India.
'On as many as two occasions, Sita is called upon to take a test to establish her integrity and loyalty to Rama and on both the occasions she opts for a course of action on her own terms,' points out A K Bhattacharya, reviewing Bibek Debroy's translation of the Ramayana.
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