Video footage of BCCI secretary Jay Shah appearing to turn down an offer to wave the national flag after India beat Pakistan in a thrilling cricket match at the Asia Cup in Dubai on Sunday has sparked a controversy, with Opposition leaders taking a dig at him.
'Most senior Congress leaders in Assam have a secret understanding with the BJP.' 'They are hobnobbing with the chief minister for their self-interest.'
The former Meghalaya chief minister, who recently switched over to the TMC along with 11 other Congress MLAs, told PTI in an interview that the political dynamics in the entire region is going to change with him quitting the grand old party.
'TMC was calling me, AAP was also calling me.' 'But my supporters helped me realise that the people of Goa are backing the Congress this time to defeat the BJP.'
Chidambaram, who is the Congress' senior election observer for the Goa Assembly polls, also hit out at the Trinamool Congress for its barbs at the Congress for not forging an alliance with it, saying the party continued to poach Congress leaders, despite making an offer of a tie-up.
Congress candidate Elangovan secured 1,10,156 votes (64.58 per cent), which is 20.29 per cent more than the 2021 assembly election as the then INC candidate secured 66,300 votes and won the seat.
'Switching loyalty from one party to another is completely unfair as it devalues my vote.'
Former chief minister of Goa and Congress veteran Luizinho Faleiro, resigned as an MLA and a primary member of the party on Monday claiming the state party unit is run by a 'coterie' of leaders even as he praised Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee saying the country needs a leader like her to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Uncertain political times in Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura.
She alleged that vehicles belonging to VIPs, with tinted glass, are being used to smuggle arms and money into West Bengal, while directing the police to increase 'naka-checking' to prevent such attempts.
The MP from East Burdwan, who defected to the BJP last December, has been put on 'probation' by the TMC, which he wants to rejoin.
'For the time being, the party to put on hold induction of TMC leaders and focus on strengthening its grassroot level organisation.'
The body of Debendra Nath Ray, in his 60s, was found hanging from the ceiling of a verandah outside a shuttered shop near his home in Bindal village in Hemtabad area of the district, police said. Ray had won the Hemtabad (reserved) seat on a Communist Party of India-Marxist ticket in 2016 but later joined the BJP. He had, however, not quit his assembly seat.
As vice president and ex-officio chairman of the Rajya Sabha, Jagdeep Dhankar is inheriting a troubled legacy. Although the government faces no real numerical challenges in the Upper House, political and legal challenges are there aplenty.
In yet another jolt to the Bharatiya Janata Party, the party's Alipurduar district president, Ganga Prasad Sharma, joined the Trinamool Congress on Monday, as senior leader of the state's ruling party Mukul Roy, who also switched sides two weeks ago, claimed that this was the 'beginning of the saffron party's end' in the state.
Trinamool Congress on Wednesday suspended party Member of Legislative Assembly Sikha Mitra for violating the party's stand. "I am scared to enter the assembly after Tuesday's violence," Mitra had told media personnel earlier on Wednesday, reacting to the ugly brawl in the legislature on Tuesday.
The special judge of MP/MLA court at Bidhannagar directed that Shah is "required to appear in person/by pleader" at 10 am on that day.
Giving a new poll slogan of 'Khel Zatlo' in Goa, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said an anti-BJP alliance has already taken shape in the coastal state under the banner of her party TMC and now it is for the Congress to decide whether it wants to join the grouping ahead of elections to take on the saffron outfit.
The four were kept at the CBI office in Nizam Palace following their arrest in the morning from their homes in different parts of Kolkata.
A police team from Purba Medinipur district also visited neighbouring Odisha in search of the absconding factory owner.
Noted economist and senior Trinamool Congress leader Amit Mitra is likely to step down as the West Bengal finance minister and even retire from active politics due to ill health, party sources said on Sunday.
A designated MP/MLA court on Monday forwarded a case of defamation brought against Union Home Minister Amit Shah by Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee to the Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Kolkata over jurisdiction issues.
Chatterjee, who was the state education minister when the scam took place, was arrested after around 26 hours of grilling in connection with the probe.
Bengal's Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday appealed for peace and asked "Hindu brothers" to ensure that minorities are protected, as prohibitory orders remained in force after post-Ram Navami violence in two towns of the densely populate Hooghly district.
The organisers, however, remained unfazed, insisting it was in line with the 'communal harmony' theme chosen by the committee for this year's puja.
'This is a new Congress. Let the BJP be warned.'
Over 83 per cent of the more than 13 lakh electorate cast their vote on Monday in the single-day Nagaland state election which passed off by and large peacefully, Chief Electoral Officer V Shashank Shekhar said.
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.
With his exit, the TMC will lose a crucial, politically influential vote catcher in the Jungalmahal region and areas in minority-dominated Murshidabad, and the BJP will get a face it badly needs, especially in rural Bengal, reports Aditi Phadnis.
As the West Bengal chief minister was busy containing the fallout of an internecine feud in her TMC following a rebellion by a redoubtable Suvendu Adhikari, the Centre shot off a fresh letter to her government to immediately relieve three IPS officers for central deputation.
Any erosion in the TMC, may benefit the BJP, reports Ishita Ayan Dutt.
Non-BJP chief ministers are retaliating. If the Centre can use its agencies to threaten, intimidate and jail its rivals, so can they. The fightback will get more intense, observes Shekhar Gupta.
The allegations drew sharp reactions from the ruling TMC, which condemned the "vulture politics" of the saffron camp, further requesting it not to politicize the death.
A case has been registered in Tripura against Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, member of Parliament Dola Sen, West Bengal education minister Bratya Basu and other senior leaders of the party for allegedly obstructing police officers from performing their duties.
West Bengal minister Jakir Hossain was seriously injured after unidentified attackers hurled a crude bomb at him on Nimtita railway station in Murshidabad district on Wednesday night, police said.
He had a contingent of about 22-24 armed CRPF commandos who used to move with him every time he travelled in West Bengal.
Banerjee lost the Nandigram assembly elections to BJP candidate and her former lieutenant Suvendu Adhikari by 1,956 votes, the Election Commission said.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday filed her nomination for Nandigram assembly seat, where she will take on her former protege and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Suvendu Adhikari and exuded confidence of winning it saying she has never returned empty-handed from the land of anti-farm land acquisition movement.
'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'
