Trinamool Congress will go it alone in next month's Assembly election in West Bengal, party supremo Mamata Banerjee on Friday said and declared the list of TMC candidates which included sports personalities, actors and journalists.
For that to happen, Moitra's much followed speeches should be heard outside Parliament so that the PR spins of the ruling dispensation are countered with informed debate, argues Shyam G Menon.
'Most senior Congress leaders in Assam have a secret understanding with the BJP.' 'They are hobnobbing with the chief minister for their self-interest.'
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.
Sarma said no NDA partner will enter into any alliance with either Congress or the Trinamool Congress after the results are declared on Thursday.
Shah said BJP worker's family had complained that his body had been taken away forcibly.
The results for bypolls to seven assembly seats in six states will be declared on Friday in what is being seen as a major test for the opposition's Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance ahead of the polls in five states later this year and Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
The political war of words over Manipur intensified on Saturday with the BJP raising the incidents of atrocities against women in West Bengal and Rajasthan and questioning the 'silence' of the opposition, which termed it as a diversionary tactic to avoid debate on the situation in the north-eastern state.
The padyatra concluded at the Lal Chowk area on Sunday with Rahul Gandhi unfurling the national flag but the official closing would take place on Monday in Srinagar, amid snowfall.
The MGP, which had won three seats in the 2017 polls, is currently left with only one MLA after two of its legislators joined the ruling BJP.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday termed the hike in rail fares as "unprecedented and anti-people" and demanded its roll back in the interest of common people.
Trinamool Congress on Monday carried out a major organisational reshuffle in the party and inducted several new faces, including some ministers with thrust on toning up the party ahead of next year's crucial panchayat polls.
Five people were killed, including 4 in the firing by Central Industrial Security Force personnel, during the fourth phase of polling
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.
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.
Mamata asserted that she will never allow the implementation of CAA in West Bengal.
While Opposition MLAs in other states are dumping their parties to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, Tripura is seeing a reverse trend.
The move came after a nine-member delegation of Bharatiya Janata Party MPs from West Bengal met Union Home Minister Amit Shah and sought his intervention and action against the perpetrators of the crime.
"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.
Banerjee also criticised Dhankhar over his recent visit to North Bengal, claiming a conspiracy was being hatched to divide the region.
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.
Gurung vowed to support the TMC in the 2021 Bengal assembly elections.
Sporadic incidents of violence and allegations of booth jamming marred the voting process in the second phase.
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.
Security measures have been heightened in view of the violence in the previous phases, particularly the death of five people in Cooch Behar in the fourth phase of polling on April 10, an Election Commission official said.
Although the TMC, which controls nearly 80 per cent of the state's panchayats, has been at the receiving end of the public ire, the opposition BJP and the CPI-M have also faced protests in some areas over allegations of fraud related to the 'Amphan' aid delivery.
In a blow to the prestige of the saffron brigade, Bharatiya Janata Party's national vice president Mukul Roy along with son Subhranshu, rejoined the Trinamool Congress on Friday, with Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and other leaders of the state's ruling party welcoming the prodigal back to the fold.
'The last three phases, the Trinamool gained more than expected due to Covid mismanagement by the Centre.'
With just over a month to go for assembly elections in Goa, political observers feel the Congress may upset the Bharatiya Janata Party's plans for retaining power in the coastal state, but appear less enthused about the Trinamool Congress, whose entry has added colour to the poll campaign.
Voting is being held at 11,860 polling stations spread over 11 assembly constituencies each in Murshidabad and Birbhum, six in Malda and seven in north Kolkata.
Alleging that there had been politicisation and criminalisation of government officers in the state, the BJP leader, who was on a two-day visit, said the TMC government had stopped sending crime statistics to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) after 2018.
'It doesn't help to transpose the Hindi heartland model on Bengal. Bengalis don't understand its dynamics. They won't comprehend the impact of Modi's dip in the Ganga because Bengal's political culture is different. Even in the Ramakrishna Mission Ashrams, Christ is worshipped on Christmas. It's difficult to polarise Bengal religiously'
Proceedings in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were disrupted as Opposition members raised slogans demanding a discussion and a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the fraud-allegation-triggered rout.
A graduate by education, Santanu, the eldest son of former Trinamool Congress minister Manjul Krishna Thakur, was more into the development of the Matuas through various social services run by the Thakurbari in Thakurnagar and was never into politics.
'It's a classic conflict between the old and the new BJP. The new BJP is made up of turncoats and the old of veterans who slogged for decades when the BJP barely existed in West Bengal'
Addressing a public rally in Sabroom in poll-bound Tripura, Shah said that the Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist had put the Ram Mandir issue in the jurisdiction of the court for long, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for it after the Supreme Court's order.
Shah accused the ruling TMC in Bengal of "spreading canards" about the Citizenship (Amendment) Act
A day after its debacle in the Kolkata civic poll, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday announced the formation of its new office bearers committee in West Bengal, axed several members of its old guard and inducted new leaders to strengthen the party in the state.
Over one crore voters in West Bengal will decide the political fate of 342 candidates on Saturday, when 45 assembly constituencies go to polls in the fifth phase, amid a raging second wave of COVID-19.
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