Senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress were stopped by police on Friday from visiting the trouble-torn Sandeshkhali, escalating the political tensions in the state as the leaders accused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of fostering a 'lawless situation' and attempting to 'communalise' the issue.
BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said efforts will be made to pacify the dissidents.
Voting for the bypolls in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were held on Wednesday.
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 Mamata Banerjee-led party, which has often been mocked by opponents for not having a well-defined ideological plank, seems to have finally found its calling in Bengali sub-nationalism, as a section of top party leaders feel only an 'inclusive message of regionalism, which the Bengalis can identify with, will counter the aggressive nationalism and Hindutva practised by the saffron camp'.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday accused NIA officials of attacking villagers in Purba Medinipur district, the BJP hit back at her saying that the attack on the NIA officials is Sandeshkhalli 2.0 orchestrated by the state.
The Congress failed to win even a single seat in the polls.
The TMC, which is yet to fully recover from the 2019 Lok Sabha poll setback, when the BJP's tally soared from two to 18, is apprehensive that the AIMIM may act as "spoiler" in several assembly segments.
National Commission for Women chairperson Rekha Sharma met President Droupadi Murmu on Tuesday and recommended President's rule in West Bengal over the Sandeshkhali violence.
The home ministry also asked the state government to send details of the action taken following the attacks on the central probe agency teams, the sources said.
"I appeal to everyone to maintain peace. I hope to be back on the field in the next few days," Banerjee said.
Besides the national capital, polling will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir. Simultaneously, polling will be held for 42 assembly constituencies in Odisha.
The Bharatiya Janata Party surprised many with its latest list of Lok Sabha candidates for West Bengal, nominating a protester from Sandeshkhali for the Basirhat constituency and changing the seats of its two incumbent MPs -- the party's former state chief Dilip Ghosh and ex-Union minister Debasree Chowdhury.
Former West Bengal chief minister and a front-ranking Marxist leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will go down in the country's history as a pragmatic communist who kept aside his ideological convictions to woo capital for the industrialisation of his state.
"Last time I stood, I was not allowed to speak. The ruling party paid a very heavy price for throttling the voice of one MP," she said, referring to her suspension in the last session.
"Not a single woman (from Sandeshkhali) has lodged any FIR. It was me who directed the police to lodge a suo motu case. Our block president has been arrested," she said.
Scenes from the election campaign in New Delhi, Mainpuri, Bardhaman, Srinagar, Etah, Mumbai and Puri.
The BJP is certain that the TMC will divide the Opposition votes, leaving it free to cruise through the polls.
Rescue officials confirmed casualties in the incident, claiming to have already recovered 5 bodies from the heap of debris where the cracker manufacturing unit once stood.
A voter turnout of 60.19 per cent was recorded till 5 pm in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections in 93 constituencies spread over 11 states and Union Territories on Tuesday with sporadic incidents of violence in West Bengal.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's decision to nominate Ananta Rai 'Maharaj', who has been demanding a separate state of 'Greater Cooch Behar' to be carved out of West Bengal, as its candidate for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections from the state, has kicked off a fresh storm with the ruling Trinamool Congress accusing the saffron party of fanning separatism in the state.
The ED officers are conducting raids at 15 places in the state during the day and Sajahan's house is one of them, an officer said.
A team of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Friday held on-spot inquiries in Sandeshkhali to ascertain facts about alleged sexual abuse by some Trinamool Congress leaders even as fresh agitation rocked the trouble-torn village, where locals torched the property of accused Trinamool leaders and held demonstrations against the delay in arresting the main accused, Shahjahan Sheikh.
Sukanta Majumdar, the state BJP president, said, "Amit Shah has set a target of 35 seats. We will achieve that".
The decision followed a petition by former deputy superintendent of the medical establishment, Akhtar Ali, who sought an investigation by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into alleged financial misconduct during the tenure of the college's former principal, Sandip Ghosh.
'The time has come for all those believe in a democratic India to stand up and be counted and to make a choice.'
Speculations are rife that heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari, who quit the Trinamool Congress and gave up cabinet portfolios in the Mamata Banerjee government, may join BJP during Shah's visit along with a slew of disgruntled TMC leaders, including some MLAs such as Silbhadra Dutta and Jitendra Tiwari.
West Bengal Director General of Police Rajeev Kumar on Thursday said that police will listen to the complaints of every individual in Sandeshkhali and strict action will be taken against those found guilty.
Bengal ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee were taken to the Central Bureau of Investigation office on Monday in connection with the Narada sting operation, officials said.
Party leaders are being forced to bite the tongue while answering queries on cut money and alleged arrogance of local TMC leaders.
"The NIA categorically refuted allegations of mala fide in its Bhupatinagar blast case," an agency spokesperson said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday named 72 more candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, including Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal and Anurag Singh Thakur, and former chief ministers Manohar Lal Khattar, Trivendra Singh Rawat and Basavaraj Bommai.
If the BJP has to work as a junior partner of Vijay's TVK, then either the party will have to change the state leader, or the latter should change himself. Incidentally, ever since Vijay started talking politics and elections, the pro-BJP/Hindutva social media had stopped dragging his name into any non-existing issue.' In particular, they have stopped referring to him by his Christian name, 'Joseph Vijay', observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The bypoll on September 5 is also a litmus test for all three political outfits, with the BJP hoping to check its erosion in its vote share and retain the seat, the TMC aiming to wrest the tribal-dominated assembly segment and the CPI(M)-Congress alliance hoping to regain its traditional seat.
The byelections are of critical importance to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who lost the assembly poll to Bharatiya Janata Party's Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram.
The advisory came a day after BJP and TMC workers clashed in Sandeshkhali area of North Parganas district.
Results of the panchayat polls indicated a paradigm shift in state politics with the baton of main opposition party passing from the Left to the BJP.
Six Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs, including Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, were suspended from the West Bengal assembly over staging protests in the House in view of unrest in Sandeshkhali.
The CBI during its probe got inputs of a large cache of arms hidden in Sandeshkhali. On Friday morning, a CBI team started a search operation during which the arms, including foreign-made pistols, were seized, the officials said.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances