Posters projecting West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as an 'outsider' surfaced in Nandigram on Wednesday, the high-profile constituency from where the Trinamool Congress supremo filed her nomination for the assembly polls.
The Trinamool Congress on Monday lost five more sitting MLAs and the control of the Malda Zilla Parishad to the Bharatiya Janata Party as defections continued to rock West Bengal's ruling party ahead of the assembly polls.
There have been rumours of infighting within the BJP's state unit.
Mamata asserted that she will never allow the implementation of CAA in West Bengal.
The Congress-led opposition stepped up its attack on Friday against the government over the Adani row and demanded that there should be a thorough investigation into what they alleged was a 'mega scam' as it involved public money.
Referring to state BJP president Dilip Ghosh's allegation that its workers were provoked by the police, he said, "They had carried arms. Is it then a provocation if the police took action? Action will be taken if there is any violation of law."
The Congress party continues to be racked by arbitrary decision-making and the absence of accountability.
The opposition parties, which have demanded the strictest action including suspension of Bidhuri for his "vile and communal" remarks during a discussion on the success of Chandrayaan-3 in Lok Sabha on Thursday, hit out at the BJP, alleging that it was trying to defend its MP instead of punishing him.
'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'
Banerjee also said she may not join the dharna being staged by Trinamool Congress MPs in protest against 'attack on party workers' in Tripura, but will surely express solidarity with them.
These include key constituencies held by Opposition parties such as Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli (Sonia Gandhi, Congress) and Mainpuri (Mulayam Singh Yadav, SP); Maharashtra's Baramati (Supriya Sule, Nationalist Congress Party); West Bengal's Jadhavpur (Mimi Chakraborty, TMC); Telangana's Mahabubnagar (Srinivas Reddy, TRS) and Madhya Pradesh's Chhindwara (Nakul Nath, Congress).
Addressing a press conference in Siliguri as part of the BJP's 'Shahid Samman Yatra', Union minister John Barla said he would discuss the issue at the appropriate level to bring to fruition for creating a separate state.
The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Union ministry of home affairs to provide two additional companies of the Central Armed Police Forces to secure every polling booth during the Tripura municipal polls.
She also took a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party over its defeat in the just-concluded Himachal Pradesh assembly elections, saying the ruling party's president could not hold on to his home state. "Who is the Pappu now?" she asked.
Two incidents of hurling of crude bombs were reported in Sealdah and Khanna areas of Kolkata, and police contingents were rushed to the spot to bring the situation under control, a State Election Commission official said.
Congress' Rahul Gandhi on Thursday slammed the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal, alleging that it only worked for the party and had failed to usher in change.
The party also announced the names of Milan Ghosh and Sujit Das for Samserganj and Jangipur seats respectively.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Mukul Roy's return to the Trinamool Congress evoked mixed reactions in the saffron camp on Friday, with its state unit president Dilip Ghosh asserting that the move will have no impact on his organisation, and former MP Anupam Hazra claiming that 'lobby politics at play is adversely affecting the party'.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday alleged that 'Bhatija (nephew) and company' had swindled central funds sent for Amphan relief and said that probe will be ordered into it and culprits will be booked after the Bharatiya Janata Party comes to power in West Bengal.
West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party chief Dilip Ghosh on Saturday said that the party has to fulfil its long-cherished mission of winning the state not only to expand its ideological footprint but also to secure India's eastern borders, which have turned into a 'transit point for terror elements' trying to create unrest in the country.
Trinamool Congress supporters held demonstrations defying lockdown norms in various places, while Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee offered to court arrest on Monday against the arrest of two West Bengal ministers in the Narada case by the CBI.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is in pain because of the injury she received recently, Home Minister Amit Shah said on Monday, wishing her a speedy recovery, but questioned that whether she could feel the pain of families of BJP workers who have been killed during the Trinamool Congress's rule in West Bengal.
'...despite not being ideologically aligned with a vast section of the people of the north east.' 'But the results in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya show that no party, including the BJP, can say that it has really done well.'
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.
Trinamool Congress on Wednesday wrote a letter to the Election Commission asking how BJP leader Narendra Modi and Congress President Sonia Gandhi could use Pawan Hans helicopters for public meetings contrary to its instructions, even as party chief Mamata Banerjee had to cancel a trip to Assam for lack of one.
Sporadic incidents of violence were reported on Tuesday in some areas where voting is underway in the third phase of the West Bengal assembly elections, even as the overall situation by and large remained peaceful with 34.71 per cent turnout recorded till 11 am, officials said.
The talk of an anti-BJP front got revived after leaders of various parties and prominent individuals congregated at Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar's New Delhi residence last month.
The TMC chief has been complaining for long alleging that her rivals have brought in goons from other states to intimidate voters.
Eleven persons were injured in a clash between the Trinamool Congress and Congress party workers at Sabong in West Midnapore district as the first phase of panchayat polls began on Thursday in West Bengal. In another incident, senior Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Surya Kanto Mishra was involved in an altercation with local Trinamool Congress supporters outside a polling booth at Khadurdah gram panchayat area in West Midnapore district.
The condition of the youth, who had slapped West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee at a rally on Sunday, was stated to be critical after he suffered multiple head injuries.
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.
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.
'The RSS-BJP fight against TMC excesses seem to have been limited to fighting the assembly poll, not coming to the defence of ordinary Bengalis who are being crushed daily by Trinamool goons,' points out Virendra Kapoor.
With the declaration of results for the Tripura Assembly polls on Thursday, the Bharatiya Janata Party returned to power in the state by winning 32 seats and its ally Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) winning one.
According to TMC sources, the chief minister had called Dhankhar from a polling booth at Boila in Nandigram constituency, where she is pitted against her protege-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and alleged that supporters of her party were not being allowed to cast votes by saffron camp workers.
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.
Banerjee, clad in her trademark white saree, greeted hundreds of people who thronged the streets during the march which took place amidst heightened security.
The march to the secretariat in Howrah district was organised by the Left parties to protest against what they called attack on democracy, and unemployment and lawlessness in the state during Trinamool Congress rule.
The opposition Trinamool Congress and Communist Party of India-Marxist failed to open their account in the AMC.
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