In Tripura, the challenge for the chief minister is less from the alliance partners and more from his own party, the BJP.
'This is the first time in Goa politics that a communal leadership is being foisted on Goa's people.'
'If Mamata Banerjee doesn't want, then violence cannot be stopped.'
Naturally, the West Bengal chief minister is not leaving anything to chance, reports Ishita Ayan Dutt.
The Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party on Wednesday decided to forge a pre-poll alliance for the next month's assembly elections in Goa, saying that the Congress didn't respond to their proposal for a joint contest.
A class 9 student was allegedly raped on April 4 in Hanskhali in West Bengal's Nadia district during a birthday party at the house of the prime accused, a local Trinamool Congress leader's son.
A total of 69.96 per cent of 28.13 lakh voters exercised their franchise in the Tripura assembly elections till 3 pm on Thursday, amid sporadic incidents of violence, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Gitte Kirankumar Dinakarrao said.
In an interview with PTI, Chidambaram also stressed that no Congress MLA elected in the upcoming assembly polls can be poached by the Bharatiya Janata Party in Goa this time, saying 'our house is well-guarded' and though the 'thief' is still out there, the people 'will teach him a lesson'.
Indicating a shift in stand, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Thursday said his party is open to consider quitting Maharashtra's ruling alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) if the rebel MLAs camping in Assam return and discuss their grievances with CM Uddhav Thackeray, while coalition allies Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress vowed support to the beleaguered governing bloc and asserted its majority can only be determined in the assembly and not outside.
In Goa, where Assembly elections are a few months away, a delegation of Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders led by Lok Sabha member Saugata Roy and including former Union Minister Babul Supriyo and the party's vice president Luizinho Faleiro met Governor P S Sridharan Pillai and requested him to immediately seek resignation from the chief minister and announce investigation by an independent agency.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be in the state this weekend, while his colleagues Gajendra Shekhawat, Sanjeev Balyan, Prahlad Patel, Arjun Munda and Mansukh Mandaviya will be visiting in the next few days, sources in the party said on Thursday.
With this phase, election will be over in 424 seats and polling in the remaining 118 seats will be held on May 12 and 19.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee directed the director general of police to instruct all the superintendents of police to take strong action against those who carried arms in the rallies.
'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.
I am not ruling out possibility of joining Cong again, says Trinamool Congress MP Somen Mitra.
'The projects that the government started to bring within Goa were totally anti-Goa and anti-people.' 'Can anyone describe a project as development when it is going to cause wanton destruction of people's houses, their surroundings and livelihoods and destruction of forests?'
The BJP deputed Shah as observer to Uttar Pradesh, where Yogi Adityanath powered the party to an impressive victory and where there are no hurdles in the way of the priest-politician's second stint in power.
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.
Assembly elections to five crucial states will take place in a few months and the results will be decisive for the BJP, which is eyeing a third successive term at the Centre, in the forthcoming the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
In case the EC doesn't hold elections within six months, the duration in which Banerjee has to become an MLA, the Trinamool Congress is ready with Plan B.
The victory was marked with the support of 32 of the total 60 MLAs in the assembly.
'Even if the BJP does not come to power, the system has changed.'
Congress MLA Rabindranath Chattopadhyay filed a written complaint at the Katwa police station on Saturday demanding immediate action as per law against Trinamool Congress leader Anubrata Mondal for threatening his party workers.
The Supreme Court on Friday annulled the Calcutta high court's June 9 order refusing to take on record the reply-affidavits of West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and state Law Minister Moloy Ghatak on their role on the day of arrest of four Trinamool Congress leaders on May 17 by the Central Bureau of Investigation in Narada scam case.
The organisation established its electoral presence post-Independence in states such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Assam, with West Bengal being its main stronghold, but eight decades down the line, the party, now limited to just some pockets of the country, has no MP or MLA in its kitty.
"In Bengal, the BJP has only one MLA but they are so afraid of us that they are saying 'bachao' (save us)," he said.
Union minister Smriti Irani will also contest the Rajya Sabha polls from Gujarat from where she is already an MP and her term ends on August 18.
This is possibly the last election in Bengal where two sides are squaring off against each other. Don't expect the BJP to be a bystander five years hence, says Devanik Saha.
Her campaign in the high-stakes constituency will begin at 11 am on Monday with an 8-kilometre roadshow from Khudiram More to Thakurchowk in Nandigram Block 2, followed by a public meeting in Jansabha Boyal II.
Sources at the private hospital where Mitra was admitted to said he died due to heart and age-related ailments.
The TMC team went there at the instruction of party supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
'Removing Biplab Deb and replacing him with Manik Saha is a fruitless exercise that the BJP national leadership has indulged in.' 'It is foolish to think that people will forget what these two have done to the state and its people in the last four years.'
Laxman Chandra Seth, believed by the vast population of the area to have been the villain of the historic anti-farmland acquisition movement in 2007, said the two built their political careers by misleading the innocent people of Nandigram. Now their lies are back to haunt them.
On chances of taking uncle Shivpal Yadav's Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party Lohia along in the polls, he said, "I dont have any problem in this. He and his men will be given due honour".
'The Congress can exist without (someone from) the Nehru-Gandhi family being its president.'
Two political parties having two members in the Jharkhand assembly merged with the Trinamool Congress in Ranchi on Monday.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew and party MP Abhishek Banerjee was on Sunday slapped by a party worker during a rally at Chandipur in East Midnapore district.
The bomb attack on West Bengal minister Jakir Hossain snowballed into a political controversy with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleging that it was a preplanned conspiracy as certain people were 'pressuring' him to switch over to another party, while opposition parties demanded National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the issue.
Polling for three parliamentary seats and 29 assembly constituencies were held on October 30, an exercise being seen as a barometer of the political mood in the country ahead of assembly elections in politically critical Uttar Pradesh as well as other states.
As their parties are locked in a fierce battle for Bengal, Tathagata and Saugata Roy, siblings who belong to the BJP and the TMC respectively, answer the same questions put to them about the assembly election.
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