Banerjee also appealed to the people of West Bengal not to get provoked over matters concerning the current situation in Bangladesh.
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.
The bench allowed the rejoinder affidavit to be filed by petitioners in two weeks thereafter and posted the matter for final hearing in January, 2025.
Congress President and Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday questioned Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman over the Union Budget and claimed that the plates of all states except Bihar and Andhra Pradesh were empty in the budget allocation.
Banerjee, who was speaking to reporters at West Bengal's state secretariat, said that her party's name will remain the All India Trinamool Congress.
BJP won 18 of the seats while the TMC won 22 of the seats.
Veteran actor Paresh Rawal on Friday apologised for his statement linking gas cylinders, Bengalis and fish during a campaign speech in Gujarat, saying his reference was to illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingyas.
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).
Some have been cherry-picked to assert the BJP's supremacy over its allies or, significantly, its leaders who charted an independent course in the recent past.
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.
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.
What we have in the Congress is a useful glue to hold a non-cultural, unified Opposition together. That is the sacrifice the Congress must be willing to live with if showing the BJP the door is what the collective Opposition wants, observes Shyam G Menon.
'If unity is not going to be based on values and principles, how will we achieve it?'
For the Congress to be taken seriously, it has to convince those around it that it could actually double its Lok Sabha seat share from the existing 52, and vote-share by a third more from the stagnating 20 per cent in 2014 and 2019, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
"This is not acceptable to us. Why should farmers at Singur suffer for the Tatas building shopping malls on their land?" Mamata, who had a meeting with the CPI(M) veteran Jyoti Basu recently, asked.
While Opposition MLAs in other states are dumping their parties to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, Tripura is seeing a reverse trend.
Chowdhury is considered a strong critic of Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee. His appointment also triggered speculation on whether he would continue to hold the post of the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, going by the party's principle of giving one post to one person.
After the trio who called on Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday -- retired diplomat and ex-Janata Dal-United MP Pavan Varma; retired cricketer and former BJP MP Kirti Azad; former Congressman Ashok Tanwar -- it was Dr Swamy's turn to call on Didi at her nephew Abishek Banerjee's Delhi home on Wednesday, instantly triggering speculation of his joining the TMC.
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget speech on Wednesday was marked by the usual thumping of benches by the ruling alliance members, but the loudest cheer was reserved for her announcement of income tax relief, which was welcomed by 'Modi, Modi' chants in Lok Sabha that also witnessed a few instances of protest by the Opposition.
'The Congress can exist without (someone from) the Nehru-Gandhi family being its president.'
This is for the second time in the last three months that Sinha has come out with praising words for Rahul Gandhi and his 'Bharat Jodo Yatra'.
The CPI-M leader was the chief minister of the state from 2000 to 2011.
Moderate to high turnout was recorded in 13 assembly constituencies across seven states where bypolls were held on Wednesday amid sporadic incidents of violence in Uttarakhand, Bihar and West Bengal.
He served as an effective link between the party and government during the two terms of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) between 2004 and 2014. As political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, he had access to leadership that no other leader in the party had and worked the channels to work out various issues.
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
The Trinamool Congress chief is keen to get the veteran leader in the party fold to counter the growing influence of young Turk Sudip Bandopadhyay.
Mamata Banerjee had founded the party in 1998 after breaking away from the Congress, and has headed it ever since.
Rattled by a series of demonstrations outside the state party headquarters in Kolkata, West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party president Sukanta Majumdar Friday issued a stern warning saying that disciplinary actions will be taken against dissenting party members.
Saturday's voting will mark the end to the marathon polling process that began on April 19 month and has already covered 486 Lok Sabha seats in 28 states and Union territories.
The party fielded Maneka Gandhi from Sultanpur, while Uttar Pradesh minister Jitin Prasada has replaced Varun Gandhi in Pilibhit.
A day after quitting the Congress, former Goa chief minister Luizinho Faleiro on Tuesday arrived in Kolkata, where he is likely to join the Trinamool Congress, party sources said.
Both the parties were not represented at the opposition meeting that decided on fielding Alva as their consensus candidate, but Pawar had said that he is in touch with both TMC leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as well as AAP convener and Delhi Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.
'Laluji personally telephoned several Opposition leaders to attend the meeting.'
The middle-aged woman, Shubra Ghorui, is said to have harboured anger against Chatterjee after the seizure of around Rs 50 crore in cash, along with jewellery, by the ED.
Cricket climate change to medical practice, dropped candidates have their non-political life sorted.
The announcement is seen as a bid to assert Banerjee's control over the party, and stem dissension between a section of TMC's old guard and the next generation leaders.
From Indian poet and philosopher Thiruvalluvar to English great William Shakespeare, Lok Sabha members quoted extensively from literature to put across their arguments as they raised the Manipur issue during a debate on the no-confidence motion over the past two days.
West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar was on Thursday shown black flags at Sitalkuchi, where four villagers died after firing by central forces during the elections, while 'go back' slogans were raised at Dinhata during his visit to Cooch Behar district to meet people allegedly affected in post poll violence.
