The National Democratic Alliance was set to sweep the Bihar assembly polls, surging ahead in over 200 of 243 seats on Friday with the Bharatiya Janata Party emerging as single largest party with about 90 per cent strike rate, reaffirming the popularity and campaign clout of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the face of the ruling alliance through the poll battle in the highly sensitive political state.
The Mamata Banerjee government will table the anti-rape bill in the West Bengal Assembly on Tuesday.
Banerjee pointed out that the pain and trauma of Partition was such, that people in the state have never commemorated any day as foundation day since India's Independence.
Among heavy criticism of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's remarks on Prayagraj's Mahakumbh, Jagadguru Shankaracharya Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati Maharaj on Wednesday supported the CM, saying that the religious event has been mismanaged.
Lambasting the Bharatiya Janata Party for allegedly bringing up the issues of NRC, CAA and Uniform Civil Code ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday asserted she would not allow anyone to take away the citizenship of people during her lifetime.
Association for Democratic33 per cent of 4,092 sitting MLAs were non-graduates.
The BJP's constitution mandates that the party should complete the process of electing block, district and state chiefs before it elects its national president.
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.
Banerjee had on Wednesday said an amendment to existing laws will be passed in the state assembly next week to ensure capital punishment to convicted rapists.
Two-time Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra is learnt to have quietly tied the knot with Biju Janata Dal leader Pinaki Misra on May 3.
NCST acting vice-chairperson Ananta Nayak said they have also received complaints against a politician, which they would include in their report to the President, the official added.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has slammed the Maha Kumbh as a "Mrityu Kumbh" (Death Kumbh), accusing the Uttar Pradesh government of suppressing the actual toll in the stampede that occurred at the religious gathering. Banerjee also criticized the lack of planning and management at the event, highlighting the plight of Bengal residents who died in the stampede. The BJP, however, has condemned Banerjee's remarks, calling her an "anti-Hindu chief minister" and accusing her of political opportunism.
The protests by resident doctors at government hospitals in several states across the country ended on Thursday as major doctors' bodies called off their 11-day strike over the rape-murder of a trainee medic in Kolkata after the Supreme Court made an appeal to them to resume work.
Struggling to gain political traction on issues of corruption, the West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party is shifting its focus to emotive topics such as the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in a bid to achieve its target of securing 35 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state.
Ajit Pawar, who heads the Nationalist Congress Party, which is in an alliance with pro-Hindutva BJP and the Shiv Sena, noted Chief Ministers Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Chandrababu Naidu (Andhra Pradesh) and Nitish Kumar (Bihar) -- all secular politicians -- aligned with the BJP for the sake of development of their respective states.
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.
The Maharashtra legislative assembly passed the 'Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill' aimed at preventing unlawful activities of Left Wing Extremist organizations, focusing on urban Naxalism and passive militancy.
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.
'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.'
The Trinamool Congress on Thursday refuted accusations of a police cover-up by the parents of the woman doctor who was allegedly raped and murdered, insisting that a newly surfaced video contradicts their claims by showing the family previously satisfied with the investigation.
The State Election Commission on Friday informed the Calcutta high court that it has requisitioned 822 companies of central forces for the July 8 panchayat polls in West Bengal.
Sporadic incidents of unrest marred the West Bengal bypolls, with a local Trinamool Congress worker Ashok Shaw dying following a crude bomb attack in Bhatpara, an area adjoining Naihati assembly constituency where voting was underway.
The resolution under Rule 169 was tabled in the assembly, proposing to observe Poila Baisakh, as "Bangla Diwas" and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's Banglar Mati, Banglar Jol (Bengal's soil, Bengal's water) as the state song.
The Supreme Court on Thursday criticised Kolkata Police for their 'extremely disturbing' delay in registering the case of a woman doctor who was raped and killed at RG Kar Hospital, while also urging the agitating doctors to return to work amid the fourteenth day of disruptions in healthcare services in Bengal's state-run hospitals.
After West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose refused to concede to their request that their swearing-in be held in the assembly, two newly elected Trinamool Congress legislators held a protest on Wednesday on the assembly premises.
The other three crore -- nearly 40 percent -- will have to provide one of the 11 listed documents to establish their place or date of birth.
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.
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
The West Bengal government objected to the inclusion of the Leader of the Opposition in the committee.
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.
The political heat in West Bengal has been giving the rising mercury levels serious competition since the high court order.
As the second half of the assembly session began, the speaker asked BJP MLA Agnimitra Paul to read out the last two lines of the motion requesting withdrawal of the suspension order against Adhikari and four other MLAs -- Manoj Tigga, Narahari Mahato, Shankar Ghosh and Dipak Barman.
Yadav further accused the BJP of "using distractions" to avoid addressing real issues such as rising unemployment, inflation, lack of investment in Uttar Pradesh, and failing healthcare facilities.
The Calcutta high court on Tuesday restrained West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and three others from making any defamatory or incorrect statement against Governor C V Ananda Bose.
The legislation revokes the original lease agreement signed between Tata Motors, the country's biggest automobile maker, and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation.
CV Ananda Bose on Wednesday took oath as the new governor of West Bengal.
While asking the Centre to set up the delimitation panel, the top court, however, said it cannot direct Parliament to amend or make laws for giving proper representation to other communities that form part of the STs as that would amount to "venturing into the legislative domain".
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.
Calling the political condition prevailing in West Bengal "horrible and frightening", Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar alleged on Tuesday that the people of the state do not have the freedom to exercise their franchise fearlessly.
Bypolls are due in Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Telangana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu
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