Navigating a history of animosity and mistrust, negotiations for a potential Congress-Trinamool Congress alliance in West Bengal face significant challenges while addressing the shared adversary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, with the Bengal Congress unit appearing reluctant to engage in an electoral pact.
The demonstration was held by the protesting school job aspirants at Camac Street in South Kolkata, where TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee's office is located.
Three ED officers were injured and several of their vehicles vandalised, as hundreds of supporters of TMC leader Shajahan Sheikh attacked them on January 5, when the team went to conduct a raid at his house in Sandeshkhali in connection with alleged irregularities in the state's ration system.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee to appear before it in Kolkata on November 9 in connection with the alleged school jobs scam, a TMC leader said on Wednesday.
Banerjee highlighted that despite repeated reminders over the last seven months, the Congress remained inactive in sealing the seat-sharing agreement.
The MLA later said he wanted to apologise to Alam as he should have controlled his anger.
Struggling to gain political traction on issues of corruption, the West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party is shifting its focus to emotive topics such as the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in a bid to achieve its target of securing 35 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state.
'Rather than assuaging the feelings of the Hindus accommodated in schools and hospitals, she calls a meeting of imams and tries to assuage them.'
Addressing an Eid prayers programme on Red Road in Kolkata, the Trinamool Congress supremo claimed, "Provocations are being made to fuel riots, but please don't fall into these traps. The West Bengal government stands with the minorities. No one can provoke tensions in the state."
Asked about her potential successor, Banerjee deflected the question with a counter-query to the interviewer, "Who is your successor?"
The Trinamool Congress Friday appointed former party MP Arpita Ghosh as its state general secretary, two days after the Rajya Sabha chairman accepted her resignation from the Upper House.
The diplomatic exercise aimed at presenting India's stance against Pakistan on terror comes in the wake of Operation Sindoor -- the Indian offensive against terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir following the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam in which 26 people, mostly tourists, were killed.
Trivedi's resignation came amidst the exodus from Mamata Banerjee's party ahead of the West Bengal assembly poll.
Around 25 buses carrying Trinamool Congress volunteers set out from Kolkata on Saturday for the planned protest programme in Delhi on October 3 against the alleged withholding of funds by the Centre, party leaders said.
The Delhi high court on Monday directed Trinamool Congress leader Saket Gokhale on Monday to apologise and pay Rs 50 lakh damages to former diplomat Lakshmi Murdeshwar Puri, wife of Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri, for his defamatory tweets against her over the purchase of a property in Switzerland.
'For the politics of patronage in West Bengal, it has always been important to have territorial control.'
Although Roy has remained tightlipped about the agenda of his visit, the political circles in West Bengal were abuzz with speculations over his next political move.
"I am very excited about joining the TMC. I will work for the development of Bengal," he said.
A delegation from the National Commission for Women (NCW) visited a relief camp in Malda, West Bengal, and reported that women were being harassed and threatened by police. The NCW team, led by chairperson Vijaya Rahatkar, met with those displaced by riots in Murshidabad and alleged that the women were being coerced to return home without proper safety measures. The team is scheduled to travel to Murshidabad and Kolkata to continue their investigation.
A Trinamool Congress legislator on Sunday threatened to not support any bill tabled by the government in the West Bengal Assembly in the future and abstain from voting in the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in the state if 'atrocities' on his loyalists allegedly by a rival faction continued, even as the Bharatiya Janata Party said the collapse of the Mamata Banerjee government was just a matter of time.
This is a complete betrayal of the mandate of the people of the Sagardighi Assembly constituency, Ramesh said on Twitter.
Local women with sticks and brooms in their hands took out processions in different areas of Sandeshkhali as the protests intensified on the second day on Friday.
Prasun Banerjee and Jawhar Sircar represented TMC in the meeting, which discussed the Opposition strategy on Rahul Gandhi's disqualification from the Parliament.
Rijiju's meeting with Bandyopadhyay came against the backdrop of the Opposition alliance's decision to pull out its members from the panel of chairpersons that will assist Mahtab in conducting the proceedings of the Lok Sabha till the election of the Speaker on Wednesday.
A three-judge Supreme Court bench will hear petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, on April 16. The petitions, including those by politicians and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, were filed in the top court challenging the validity of the newly-enacted law. The Centre has filed a caveat in the apex court, seeking a hearing before any order is passed.
Mamata asserted that she has not spoken to anyone in the Congress on seat-sharing in the state for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
'The BJP lacks a credible mass leader who matches Mamata Banerjee's popularity.' 'Given the division of votes among Opposition parties, the West Bengal government's dole-giving strategy, and the consolidation of the poor, significant sections of scheduled caste groups and Muslim minorities behind the ruling party, it will be difficult to dislodge the Trinamool from power.'
The juggernaut of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, which triumphed in three of the four east and north-eastern states that went for assembly bypolls on Saturday, was halted yet again in West Bengal where Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress registered a six-on-six clean sweep.
The Bharatiya Janata Party dubbed the arrest as scripted and claimed he was in the safe custody of West Bengal Police.
They then vandalised the premises, breaking CCTV cameras and locking the main gate before leaving, he said.
The raids were conducted on Wednesday evening to Thursday morning, he said. There was no objection to the raids by Hossain, a two-time TMC MLA and a businessman.
The ED had arrested Chatterjee, who is also the Trinamool Congress secretary-general, on July 23 in connection with its investigation into alleged irregularities in the recruitment drives by the School Service Commission.
Dev had been serving as the national spokesperson of the Congress and its women's wing chief.
Over the medium and long term, the BJP hopes to devour the AIADMK, they having identified the party as 'ideologically not as sound as the DMK', predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Rajya Sabha member Kapil Sibal has criticised Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar for questioning the judiciary over the timeline for the president to take decisions, calling it "unconstitutional " and a lowering of the dignity of the chair. Sibal asserted that Dhankhar's remarks are not neutral and amount to an attack on the judiciary by the executive. He also pointed out that the president acts on the aid and advice of the council of ministers, and therefore, the president's power cannot be curtailed. Sibal urged Dhankhar to seek a review of the judiciary's decision or an advisory opinion from the Supreme Court if he has problems with it. He also questioned why Dhankhar only focuses on actions taken during Congress governments and not after 2014.
'The more you challenge her, the more powerful she gets'
The Calcutta high court on Tuesday allowed Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari to visit the restive Sandeshkhali village, while observing that it is surprising that the main accused Shajahan Sheikh has not been arrested by the state police so far.
Amid demands for expulsion of arrested West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee by Trinamool Congress leaders, the party convened a meeting on Thursday evening.
Senior Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee on Friday said he will participate in the party's protest programme in New Delhi on October 3, a day after he was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for questioning in connection with the school jobs scam in Kolkata on the same day.
Banerjee, considered number two in the party, declined to comply with the notice, citing his engagement with an ongoing mass outreach campaign and upcoming panchayat polls.
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