United Progressive Alliance on Wednesday projected a united picture on the eve of the Presidential poll with all constituents including Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and supporting parties attending a lunch hosted by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.
Speaking to reporters at Kanthi in Purba Medinipur district, Giri said he will resign but won't apologise.
Former Union Minister Deepa Dasmunsi was on Friday made the Congress candidate from Bhabanipur seat in West Bengal to take on Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee in the assembly elections.
4,809 members of the electoral college comprising MPs and MLAs set to elect the successor to incumbent Ram Nath Kovind.
According to a schedule of her five-day visit provided by her Trinamool Congress, Banerjee is slated to meet Modi at 4 pm on Tuesday.
He also accused the Trinamool Congress supremo of doing appeasement politics even in case of deaths.
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.
The TMC chief had said that she would never allow the Centre to conduct a similar exercise in West Bengal.
Opposition parties allege the Modi government is attempting to turn India into a 'dictatorship' with the introduction of three Bills that seek to provide for removal of the prime minister, chief ministers and ministers arrested on serious charges, and vowed to oppose it 'tooth and nail'.
"How dare they attack my car! I kept mum only because the elections are on. Or else I would have seen how big they have grown," Banerjee said at a rally in Goghat.
Sources said Rujira had reached Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata with her two children around 7am before being stopped before immigration.
The picture of Shah and Mamata sharing a lunch led to talks in the political circles about a possible scale down in their attacks on each other.
The CBI's visit to Abhishek's residence comes after Rujira told the central agency that she will be available for examination between 11 am and 3 pm on February 23, replying to a notice that the sleuths had hand-delivered her on Sunday.
Sporadic incidents of violence and allegations of booth jamming marred the voting process in the second phase.
He said the Bharatiya Janata Party's 'Parivartan Yatra' is not for changing a chief minister, MLA or minister but ending infiltration and transforming the condition of West Bengal.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday appealed to the people to ensure the Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in 35 seats out of the 42 in West Bengal in the next Lok Sabha polls, saying that the Trinamool Congress government would not survive beyond 2025 if the target is achieved.
After big win in Bihar, the BJP is likely to push harder in Tamil Nadu, where the DMK government and the uneasy BJP-AIADMK alliance are preparing for a tense election filled with seat-sharing fights, changing alliances, and the unpredictable entry of Vijay's TVK party, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Soon after her arrival at the Mumbai airport for attending the two-day meeting of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) on August 31 and September 1, Banerjee drove to Bachchan's residence 'Jalsa' in suburban Juhu.
'My role will be to take her message across the country.'
As BJP leaders went all out to project the event as a moment of national pride, some leaders were directly critical of the ceremony with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, belonging to the Communist Party of India-Marxist, slamming the state's role in the Ram Temple consecration, saying the line that demarcates religion and state seems to be 'getting thinner and thinner'.
Dada present at event bringing La Liga to India.
The Congress is hopeful of soon finalising the Lok Sabha poll seat-sharing arrangements with the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) allies Aam Aadmi Party and Trinamool Congress, sources said on Friday, days after the principal opposition party arrived at an understanding with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh.
'The numbers have been scaled down for the Trinamool Congress. Today, the upper number of victories seems to be 30, with 25 seats being the realistic option. The Trinamool Congress may still be the largest non-BJP, non-Congress party in the next Lok Sabha, but it may not make it to the Cabinet table, leave alone sit in the top chair,' says T V R Shenoy.
At least three people were killed and several others injured in a blast near the venue of senior Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee's rally in West Bengal's Purba Medinipur district, police said on Saturday.
A delegation of the National Commission for Women (NCW), led by its chairman Vijaya Rahatkar, met with riot-affected women in Murshidabad district of West Bengal, assuring them of safety and demanding an NIA probe into the recent communal clashes. The women narrated their harrowing experiences and demanded permanent BSF camps in select areas of the district. The NCW team also visited relief camps in Malda district and assessed the condition of women affected by the violence.
Describing the meeting as 'positive', Banerjee said she discussed the political situation in the country as well as opposition unity with the Gandhis.
Accusing Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi of being an "opportunist", prominent cleric Maulana Barkati on Tuesday asked Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee to be more critical of Modi in order to prove her secular credentials.
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 minister and veteran Trinamool Congress leader Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay is all set to vacate the Bhabanipur assembly seat on Friday as party supremo Mamata Banerjee is likely to contest bypoll from the constituency, party sources said.
A fresh political row has erupted in West Bengal after a person allegedly involved in Bangladesh's August 2024 student protests was found listed as a voter in Kakdwip, triggering sharp Bharatiya Janata Party-Trinamool Congress exchanges over alleged illegal infiltration and manipulation of the voter list in the state.
An MP from Baharampur since 1999 and the reigning Pradesh Congress president of West Bengal, this was perhaps Chowdhury's toughest electoral challenge which came in the form Pathan, the non-resident TMC candidate.
Trinamool Congress's (TMC) Rajya Sabha MP and former Goa chief minister Luizinho Faleiro has tendered his resignation from the Upper House of Parliament, party sources said on Tuesday.
Trinamool Congress sources on Wednesday claimed the Congress delayed the talks and made unreasonable demands on seat-sharing without acknowledging the ground reality.
The CBI, tasked by the Calcutta high court to probe the case, received local court approval to conduct a polygraph test on the accused, days after performing a psychoanalysis test on him.
Reaching out to arch rival Communist Party of India - Marxist, the Trinamool Congress on Thursday invited outgoing West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the new government, to be headed by Mamata Banerjee.Deputy leader of the Trinamool Congress legislature party Partha Chatterjee met Bhattacharjee at his Palm Avenue residence in Kolkata and invited him for the ceremony.Chatterjee invited both Bhattacharjee and his wife Meera.
The family members of Border Security Force constable Purnam Kumar Shaw, who was released by Pakistan from its custody on Wednesday, expressed immense relief and gratitude to the central government and BSF authorities for securing his return.
Dhankhar in his letter claimed that the state of governance in the state was 'cliff hanging' and had been further strained by the barbarity witnessed in the Birbhum killings.
The Trinamool Congress on Wednesday said there was no need for West Bengal Chief Minister and party president Mamata Banerjee to offer an apology for some of its party workers taking part in a function in which women dancers were hired to perform an alleged erotic dance
"Since the elections started in West Bengal, central government hatched conspiracies to remove us (from power). I was hurt in my feet so that I don't contest the polls," she said.
Amid signs of increasing bonhomie between her and her Telangana and Tamil Nadu counterparts Rao and Stalin, Banerjee had approached the two on Sunday to set up meetings of opposition chief ministers.