BJP strategists are missing something somewhere, and they have not acknowledged it, to be able to repair it in good time, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
He was reviled by critics in his party as a neo-liberal in disguise but till the end, he retained his belief in secularism and the humanity of Communism.
The ED had arrested Chatterjee, who is also the Trinamool Congress secretary-general, on July 23 in connection with its investigation into alleged irregularities in the recruitment drives by the School Service Commission.
'If the INDIA bloc ever forms the government, they will be more than tempted to use such provisions to bring about regime change in BJP-ruled states.'
Amid this unrest came the verdict of the Allahabad high court on June 12, 1975 that found Gandhi guilty over discrepancies in the electoral campaign, which led to the Emergency on the night of June 25.
Trinamool Congress on Monday carried out a major organisational reshuffle in the party and inducted several new faces, including some ministers with thrust on toning up the party ahead of next year's crucial panchayat polls.
What some of our politicians were up to on Tuesday, September 24, 2024.
In a major relief to 25,753 teachers and non-teaching staff of West Bengal, the Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the order of the Calcutta high court order invalidating their appointment made by the state's School Service Commission (SSC) in the state-run and state-aided schools.
An imbroglio over the timing started after Dhankhar had on February 24 summoned the assembly at 2 am on March 7 on the basis of a proposal by the Mamata Banerjee cabinet, which was later clarified as a typographical error.
Banerjee said her microphone was stopped after five minutes, while other chief ministers were allowed to speak for longer durations.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday grilled arrested West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee and his alleged associate Arpita Mukherjee who were arrested in connection with the school jobs scam, sources said.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday conducted raids in three locations in and around Kolkata and again recovered large stacks of cash from a flat linked to Arpita Mukherjee, considered a close associate of arrested West Bengal Industry Minister Partha Chatterjee.
L Murugan, 44, is the only newly-sworn minister who is not a member of Rajya Sabha or Lok Sabha.
The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved conferring the status of classical language on Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali languages.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal for 'one nation, one Election' as recommended by the Kovind panel, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday.
'We are pleased to announce the candidature of @sagarikaghose, @SushmitaDevAITC, @MdNadimulHaque6 and Mamata Bala Thakur for the forthcoming Rajya Sabha elections,' the party said in a tweet.
Sources in the party have been maintaining that Congress will induct at least one minister from West Bengal during this reshuffle.
In a series of tweets, the Home Department of the West Bengal government said the Governor's act of making the letter public was "violative of all established norms, and disrupts sanctity of such communications".
A new book by former West Bengal governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi claims that former chief election commissioner T N Seshan proposed an immediate halt to the general election process after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991 and even offered to become home minister. Gandhi, who was joint secretary to then president R Venkatraman, writes that Seshan was the one who broke the news of the assassination to the president and arrived at the Rashtrapati Bhawan "super-fast" that night. According to Gandhi's account, Seshan told Venkatraman that he felt the election process needed to be stopped and that he was ready to take on the role of home minister if necessary. However, Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar and Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra assured the president that the situation was under control and that there was no need to pause the election process. Seshan's suggestions were ultimately ignored, but he did manage to postpone the second and third phases of polling.
West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar Saturday stuck to his stand that a cabinet recommendation is required for him to consider the change in the timing of the assembly session from 2 am to 2 pm on March 7.
This will be the 49-year-old JMM leader's fourth stint as chief minister. Soren retained the Barhait seat, defeating BJP's Gamliyel Hembrom by a margin of 39,791 votes in the recent assembly polls.
'I had to persuade him. I think he was a sceptic to begin with, but later on he was convinced that what we were doing was the right thing to do, that there was no other way out.'
In an open letter, Banerjee said the COVID warriors, including police, home guards, civil defence volunteers, correctional home and disaster management employees, will be administered the vaccine on a priority basis.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Wednesday approved seven multi-tracking projects of Indian Railways at an estimated cost of around Rs 32,500 crore, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said. The proposed projects, which will be fully funded by the Centre, will help increase the existing line capacity, smoothen train operations, reduce congestion and facilitate ease of travelling and transportation. The projects covering 35 districts in nine states -- Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal -- will increase the existing network of Indian Railways by 2,339 km and provide employment of an estimated 7.06 crore man-days to the people of the states.
In 2019, an all-party meeting was held in Delhi and it was attended by 19 political parties to discuss critical reforms in governance. One of the subjects of the discussions was simultaneous elections
India maintains Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura belong to it.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be in the state this weekend, while his colleagues Gajendra Shekhawat, Sanjeev Balyan, Prahlad Patel, Arjun Munda and Mansukh Mandaviya will be visiting in the next few days, sources in the party said on Thursday.
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.
Jayanta Roy Chowdhury reports on how the West Bengal elections are being fought by the BJP and Trinalool Congress amid COVID challenges, 'Bangaliana', and campaigns based on religion, region, and caste.
Noted economist and senior Trinamool Congress leader Amit Mitra is likely to step down as the West Bengal finance minister and even retire from active politics due to ill health, party sources said on Sunday.
Debutant legislator Rekha Gupta was sworn in as Delhi chief minister along with six ministers on Thursday in a grand show of strength full of colour and spectacle to mark the Bharatiya Janata Party's return to power in the city after more than 26 years.
Those who know Alapan Bandyopadhyay describe him as measured, tactical and extremely focused on achieving what he sets out to do. To many it came as a surprise that he would cut short a meeting with the prime minister.
The Enforcement Directorate has arrested West Bengal minister Jyotipriyo Mallick in a money laundering case linked to an alleged multi-core ration distribution scam in the state, official sources said on Friday.
Former West Bengal chief minister and a front-ranking Marxist leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will go down in the country's history as a pragmatic communist who kept aside his ideological convictions to woo capital for the industrialisation of his state.
This is the first reshuffle in the Council of Ministers by Prime Minister Modi since he assumed charge for a second term in May 2019.
A final decision on Congress joining the new government in West Bengal at the invitation of ally Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee will be taken by the party high command, senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee said on Sunday. "We will take a final decision after discussions with the Congress high command. Decision will be disclosed at the appropriate time," Mukherjee said. "I congratulate Mamata Banerjee for this fantastic win. It is a big achievement," he said.
The aircraft was allowed to move inside India as the air defence personnel knew who was inside the plane, they said.
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.
As the West Bengal chief minister was busy containing the fallout of an internecine feud in her TMC following a rebellion by a redoubtable Suvendu Adhikari, the Centre shot off a fresh letter to her government to immediately relieve three IPS officers for central deputation.
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar appear to have got the maximum representation in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new council of ministers, while assembly poll-bound Maharashtra also found a significant presence.
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