The Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to stop mass joinings from the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal amid growing resentment within the saffron party over rampant inductions without scrutiny, senior leaders said on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Bengal's own daughter she firmly pitched herself as, was sworn in as the chief minister of the turbulent state for the third successive term amid raging fires of political violence and a rampaging pandemic.
'They have a voracious appetite.' 'But there are many places where they go and they lose.'
Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced Adhikari's name as leader of the BJP legislature party in the assembly after a meeting of the legislators at the party's Hastings office.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appealed to people to maintain peace and calm and urged the protesters to refrain from taking law into own hands.
'There is no hard evidence, but our MLAs have been getting calls from industrialists and mining mafia in the state to quit the Congress and join the BJP.'
The West Bengal on Thursday became the sixth state to pass a resolution against the three contentious farm laws enacted by the Centre, even as the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party staged a walkout from the assembly amid 'Jai Shri Ram' slogans.
"Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its implementation got delayed. But as the situation is slowly improving, the work has started. The rules are now being framed and CAA will be implemented very soon. Under this act all the eligible people will definitely get Indian citizenship," Nadda told the social groups, who included Dalits, Gorkhas, Rajbanshis and other tribes.
Over 1.54 crore voters in the eastern states of West Bengal and Assam will exercise their franchise in the 1st phase of polling
Adhikari, a former minister in the cabinet of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, had resigned from the primary membership of the TMC on Thursday.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said she had suggested to the Congress that an advisory council comprising prominent personalities from civil society be set up to give a direction to the opposition, but rued that the plan did not materialise.
'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.
'This is the first time in Goa politics that a communal leadership is being foisted on Goa's people.'
In Tripura, the challenge for the chief minister is less from the alliance partners and more from his own party, the BJP.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
I am not ruling out possibility of joining Cong again, says Trinamool Congress MP Somen Mitra.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'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 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 victory was marked with the support of 32 of the total 60 MLAs in the assembly.
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.
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.
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.
'Even if the BJP does not come to power, the system has changed.'
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.
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.
"In Bengal, the BJP has only one MLA but they are so afraid of us that they are saying 'bachao' (save us)," he said.
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 TMC team went there at the instruction of party supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
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.
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