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.
A five-member delegation of TMC MPs, comprising Derek O'Brien, Satabdi Roy, Prasun Banerjee, Pratima Mondal and Md Nadimul Haque, also met the farmers there to support their protest against the new farm laws.
The recent controversy unfolded after West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC leader Mamata Banerjee had in November advocated the need to give due respect to senior members and rejected the notion that elderly leaders should retire from active politics.
The CAA, enacted by the BJP-led government at the Centre in 2019, aims at granting Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants, including Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan who entered India before December 31, 2014.
Sangma, the outgoing chief minister, said he has support of the BJP, the HSPDP and two Independent MLAs, while asserting the total tally may go up in the coming days as he is in touch with other parties as well.
He also hit out at the Congress saying governments in the past 70 years kept quiet on blackmoney because they were worried about losing power.
"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.
The original suggestion was to call it 'Indian National Democratic Inclusive Alliance', but the word 'democratic' was replaced with 'developmental' after Kumar and Yechury raised some objections saying it sounded too similar to the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), sources said.
Counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections has begun across states and Union Territories, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar told PTI.
The BJP on Sunday authorised its president J P Nadda and Union minister Rajnath Singh to hold consultations with different political parties, including those in the opposition, on the president's election, in what is being seen as an outreach by the ruling party to arrive at a consensus on the choice for the top constitutional post.
This was second time in a month that the TMC supremo had a telephonic interaction with the agitating farmers.
Addressing her first rally in a district after being injured at the hustings in Nandigram, Banerjee said as long as she has her voice and her heart functions, she will continue to fight.
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'.
Cricketer Yusuf Pathan will contest from the Baharampur Lok Sabha seat, whereas Kirti Aazd will fight from the Bardhaman-Durgapur constituency.
Kumar had also made it clear that he was in the process of uniting the non-BJP leaders.
A number of high-profile electoral battles, starring veterans and debutants, formidable opponents and unlikely contestants, feature in Tuesday's outcome.
Mamata Banerjee's party won 132 seats and was all set to pocket two more to post a hat-trick of wins, decimating a frail challenge from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, the Left Front and the Congress, officials said.
The TMC chief had said that she would never allow the Centre to conduct a similar exercise in West Bengal.
A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice P S Narasimha allowed Banerjee to avail available remedies under the law but refused to interfere with the May 18 order of the Calcutta high court.
'Till today, we don't know how many people died of Covid in India.' 'How many migrated from cities to villages during the Covid pandemic?' 'How many corporates contributed to PM Cares?'
"I say I am a 'big donkey' (Ami ekta boro gadha) for having failed to recognise them. I dont know (about it), but people say their 'empire' is worth Rs 5,000 crore and they will use money to buy votes. But don't vote for them," Banerjee told the rally.
Locked in a bitter tussle with the Centre over the control of administrative services, Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party national convenor Arvind Kejriwal will meet the chiefs of the Trinamool Congress, Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray and the Nationalist Congress Party this week seeking their support.
Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has recently written to all opposition parties including the Congress, calling on everyone to come together and put up a united fight against saffron forces.
Dominic Xavier offers his take on the latest episode in the BJP's Mission Bengal.
Mamata proposed his name as the joint Opposition candidate for the President's post.
"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.
Two days after quitting the Congress, former Goa chief minister Luizinho Faleiro joined the Trinamool Congress on Wednesday.
Election will be held in 60 out of the total 294 seats in the first two phases of the eight-phased polls which is slated to stretch from March 27 to April 29. The date for the second phase of election is April 1.
Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday unveiled a 'development-oriented' manifesto for the upcoming assembly polls in West Bengal, promising an income scheme for all families, a student credit card and constitution of a task force to examine the inclusion of several communities under the OBC category.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Sunday alleged that Dinesh Trivedi, who resigned from the Rajya Sabha on Friday, took the 'House for a ride' and was 'allowed' to use the floor of the House for his 'devious political ends'.
'My role will be to take her message across the country.'
The real risk is that the core assumption -- that the votes for a candidate sponsored by an alliance will at least equal the sum total of its parts -- proves to be facile, observes T N Ninan.
The marathon polling process to elect the 18th Lok Sabha ended on Saturday with the seventh phase of elections witnessing an approximate voter turnout of 62.36 per cent, amid clashes between Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party supporters in Sandeshkhali and some other parts of West Bengal.
Among the keenly watched contests are those involving former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav (Kannauj, UP) and Union ministers Giriraj Singh (Begusarai, Bihar), Nityanand Rai (Ujiarpur, Bihar) and Raosaheb Danve (Jalna, Maharashtra).
As the countdown begins for the Durga Puja festival, a section of Trinamool Congress supporters have put up a hoarding in Kolkata bearing various photographs of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee with a caption in Bengali -- 'Modishahsurmardini', punning with 'Mahisasuramardini' (demon slayer).
"I am ready to fight the money power (of her political opponents), and (central) agencies (which her party alleges has been unleashed on TMC with a political motive), but I will not bow my head," she said.
She alleged that vehicles belonging to VIPs, with tinted glass, are being used to smuggle arms and money into West Bengal, while directing the police to increase 'naka-checking' to prevent such attempts.
Modi later contended at a rally at Gangarampur in Dakshin Dinajpur, that Banerjee has been abusing him almost every other day as he raises questions on Trinamool Congress track record of "corruption".
Mamata said the saffron party could not build even a small Ram temple in the last five years.
The BJP, which has emerged as the main opposition party in West Bengal after winning 77 seats in the assembly polls last year, failed to win even a single civic body.
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