Reliance Industries chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani on Tuesday announced an additional Rs 20,000-crore investment for West Bengal over the next three years. Ambani said the fresh investment will be in the areas of digital life solutions, retail and bio-energy.
Bankura continued to top the maximum temperature chart at 43.7 degrees Celsius, while Panagarh in Paschim Bardhaman district followed closely at 43.5 degrees Celsius, the weather office said.
Nine MLAs, including Babul Supriyo, took oath as ministers in West Bengal on Wednesday, in a major reshuffle of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's cabinet.
The words 'industry', 'industrial development', 'jobs', and 'employment' have been ringing with higher frequency since Mamata Banerjee stepped into her third term with landslide victory after a high-octane election last year. "Our government's next target is industrial development," the chief minister (CM) had been heard stating at different public meetings in the past few months - perhaps setting the tone for the sixth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) slated for later this month. Investor summits by any state are about intent, big numbers, and tall claims. Yet in competitive federalism, its importance as a marketing tool is undeniable.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who rushed to the district late on Sunday night, assured the people of all help from the administration.
Three ED officers were injured and several of their vehicles vandalised, as hundreds of supporters of TMC leader Shajahan Sheikh attacked them on January 5, when the team went to conduct a raid at his house in Sandeshkhali in connection with alleged irregularities in the state's ration system.
Four big global companies - Bayer, GenZero (a wholly-owned arm of financial major Temasek), Shell and Mitsubishi - have decided to scale up their carbon credit programme in nine states to empower farmers. The credits are generated through the adoption of smart agriculture practices - Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) and Direct Seeded Rice (DSR). Since over a year, the project, which was being run on a pilot basis, has positively impacted 10,000 farmers, covering more than 25,000 hectares.
"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 BJP had no option but to get Jagdeep Dhankhar out of its way for the sake of the Modi government's stability, reveals Sheela Bhatt, the legendary political journalist.
The state government has directed a joint assessment of crop loss due to the cyclone by officials of the agriculture and revenue departments, he said.
Several leading scientists, academicians, and agriculturalists have called for raising government support for research and development to make Indian agriculture future-ready.
It was the summer of 2006 (May 18). Writers' Building, then the state secretariat, was buzzing with journalists. The event marked the start of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's second term as chief minister. And in style, it got off with West Bengal bagging the small car plant, Nano.
Chandragupta Maurya was the first king to establish an empire in India. He died a monk.
The Bharat Mata controversy in Kerala shows how political and symbolic fights between the state and the Centre have taken attention away from education, throwing the state's oldest university into confusion and disorder, observes Shyam G Menon.
There are challenges galore before him, and it is not going to be easy. In the next four years, he has to conjure a system that changes the optics about him and the BJP both nationally and internationally so that he can ride back on his own, claim the top slot, and not have to lean on a coalition, asserts Ramesh Menon as Modi 3.0 completes a year in power.
The chief minister said the government was setting up cold storages in all blocks besides warehouses and kisan mandis in the PPP model for which land has been identified.
Lakhs of voters will have to bear the searing heat when they step out to exercise their franchise in the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections on Friday.
The agriculture department of West Bengal would use the network of e-kiosks being set up in the state by the information technology department to build links between farmers, agricultural experts and regional rural and co-operative banks. The move was aimed at improving the accessibility of farmers to credit facilities, said Sanjeev Chopra, secretary, department of agriculture, West Bengal, on the sidelines of a seminar organised in Kolkata.
Lessons of Bengal's ill-advised restriction on potato trade.
On May 15, the weather office had announced the onset of monsoon over Kerala by May 31.
Ten to 20 days of heatwave are expected against the normal of four to eight days in the entire April-June period.
The West Bengal government is chalking out a new plan to set right the serious agricultural imbalance that the state faces.
BJP and RSS leaders are once again pushing to remove the words 'secular' and 'socialist' from the Constitution's Preamble, showing a deeper effort to change India's identity from a diverse, multi-religious republic to a Hindu-first nation, even though they don't have the numbers in Parliament to officially change the Constitution, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'I am not an aspiration-oriented politician.' 'This is the time to redefine politics.' 'Politics of power is not real politics.'
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
Heatwave conditions have been prevailing in Odisha since April 15 and the Gangetic West Bengal since April 17, according to the MeT department.
West Bengal government would continue to invite investments despite the controversy over acquisition of agricultural land for setting up industrial units, the state's industry minister Nirupam Sen said on Tuesday.
The West Bengal chief minister dished out a prescription to improve the economic condition of the state.
A drone from Skye Air Mobility on Tuesday covered an aerial distance of 104 km in West Bengal to deliver a medicine consignment of Flipkart Health, the longest commercial delivery using an unmanned vehicle in the state, a company statement said on Tuesday. The drone took off from Flipkart's Baruipur hub in South 24 Parganas and delivered medicines at the Healthbuddy Matangini in the state's Purba Medinipur district, it said. The distance between the two places is 185 km by road, and it takes about four-five hours to cover by the surface transport.
In the coming months, globally as well as in India, rice might remain a hot potato.
BJP chief J P Nadda on Thursday launched 'Lokkho Sonar Bangla' (target to build golden Bengal) manifesto crowdsourcing campaign to seek suggestions from more than two crore people in West Bengal ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.
Mamata Banerjee led TMC has released its election manifesto on Monday promising to bring all round development in West Bengal with special emphasis on industry and agriculture.
The IMD said that rainfall over India in August and September would be around 106 percent of the long-period average of 422.8 mm.
'The life of his political career is dependent on success in this constituency.'
West Bengal government puts on hold all special economic zones in the state until a 'socially balanced' decision is taken in this regard.
The National Human Rights Commission, in its report, also observed that the "pervasive fear of reprisal, coupled with the power dynamics at play, acted as a formidable barrier", preventing individuals from voicing their grievances.
'Why shouldn't we talk against the BJP when it is solely responsible for bringing in these three laws by riding rough over Parliamentary procedures and norms?' 'We will talk against the BJP because it is the sole political party responsible for pushing these destructive farm laws'
Left Front constituent Forward Bloc, which runs West Bengal's agriculture marketing board, and CPI-M leaders, on Sunday decided to renew Metro Cash & Carry's Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee licence on October 10. However, to protect small traders in the city, the State Agriculture Marketing Board will impose certain conditions on Metro, the modalities of which will be decided in the intervening period.
High nitrate levels have been found in groundwater of 440 districts across India, with 20 per cent of the samples collected exceeding the permissible nitrate concentration, the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) has said in a report.
Facing a stiff challenge to stem the decline of the Left Front in West Bengal, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Monday asserted that the alternative to the Left's rule was anarchy and asked supporters not to be demoralised by the success of the opposition."Change for what, anarchy? West Bengal is in no mood to fall behind. We want to move ahead in agriculture, industry, education, health, human development. Is there any substitute to it," Bhattacharjee said.
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