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.
Fish sellers of Chittranjan Park found themselves in a state of disbelief last week when the anti-meat overdrive of the Hindu right hit the local markets with a warning to shut shops because they were close to a temple.
District health officials said that these leaders are all associated with different hospitals as members of the Patients' Welfare Committees, making them eligible for the vaccination programme in the first round.
The West Bengal assembly on Tuesday plunged into bedlam with ruling Trinamool Congress and Left members coming to blows and the speaker suspending three Left MLAs, while three injured members were taken to hospital.
Modifying the single bench order, the division bench presided by Justice I P Mukerji directed that Banerjee and Ghosh will be free to make any statement concerning the Governor, not crossing the contours of freedom of speech and expression and public duty.
The TMC general secretary, considered number two in the party, shared the letter sent to him by the central agency on X, formerly 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.
They are actively engaging with the party leadership for the past some time but the party is yet to take a call, the sources said, adding the MPs include one from the north of the country and one from south.
The Congress on Tuesday suffered a major upset in Himachal Pradesh at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rajya Sabha elections which were marred by cross-voting in all the three states though it won three seats in Karnataka while the saffron party pocketed an extra seat in Uttar Pradesh.
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.
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.
Later on while speaking to the reporters, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said the BJP legislators were forced to stage protest as there was no mention of post-poll violence in the speech copy circulated among the MLAs.
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.
Chatterjee, who also held several portfolios in the Banerjee government as a minister, lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah for their bold leadership and said there should be no place for negative politics, an apparent attack on TMC supremo.
'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?'
BJP MLA from Kaliagnaj Soumen Roy Saturday joined the ruling TMC, becoming the fourth saffron party legislator to do so since the West Bengal assembly poll results were declared in May.
This is a complete betrayal of the mandate of the people of the Sagardighi Assembly constituency, Ramesh said on Twitter.
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
The resolution under Rule 169 was tabled in the assembly, proposing to observe Poila Baisakh, as "Bangla Diwas" and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's Banglar Mati, Banglar Jol (Bengal's soil, Bengal's water) as the state song.
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.
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.
While Opposition MLAs in other states are dumping their parties to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, Tripura is seeing a reverse trend.
The Association of Democratic Reforms said Goa has set a unique record, which is "unparalleled" in the history of Indian democracy.
They will, however, remain in the Congress, Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Ampareen Lyngdoh said.
'The decline of the Congress party and its inability to play the lead role in Opposition politics has created a space for the TMC to expand.'
Mitra, who had resigned from the BJP a few days ago, is considered close to veteran leader L K Advani.
Paul, who was in Mumbai to visit his daughter, complained of chest pain at the Mumbai airport during his return to Kolkata and was rushed to a hospital in Juhu but died around 4 am, they said.
'The Congress don't have the zeal to fight the BJP. The party is so bogged down by infighting that it hardly has time or energy to build an opposition. The UPA does not exist'
The counting of votes for the bypolls to 46 assembly seats in 13 states and in the Lok Sabha segments of Nanded in Maharashtra and Wayanad in Kerala, a crucial electoral exercise since the parliamentary polls in April-May, will begin at 8 am on Saturday.
A Bharatiya Janata Party leader, who the Trinamool Congress said is a brother-in-law of the saffron party's national vice-president Mukul Roy, rejoined the ruling party of West Bengal on Wednesday.
The report, made public on Saturday, claimed the complaints were "ill-motivated."
The resignation of Kandolkar and two other leaders, who had contested on the TMC symbol, came as another setback for the Mamata Banerjee-led party which is struggling to retain its flock in Goa since the poll debacle.
Banerjee scored a personal point with a massive victory in the bypoll with a record margin of 58,835 votes.
The TMC, in total, bagged 75.02 per cent of the votes cast, whereas the BJP got some 14.48 per cent votes, in the four assembly segments.
Raijor Dal president Akhil Gogoi said on Thursday that his party has not accepted the Trinamool Congress's proposal of a merger as it does not want to compromise on its Assamese identity.
The minister urged the doctors to rejoin work by respecting the Supreme Court's direction to them, but refrained from giving a direct reply on whether the state government would take any punitive action for violating the apex court's order.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday received wholehearted support from a group of women from the troubled Sandeshkhali area who met her after a Trinamool Congress rally in Kolkata, party sources said.
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.
"I am very excited about joining the TMC. I will work for the development of Bengal," he said.
The draft legislation seeks capital punishment for persons convicted of rape if their actions result in the victim's death or leave her in a vegetative state.
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