Dismissing West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's criticism of Duronto Express, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee said the importance and success of the train cannot be diminished.
Kicking off a virtual campaign for the assembly polls due in three months, Bhattacharjee alleged that 'foreign forces' along with the Congress, Trinamool Congress and Maoists had ganged up against his government.
The West Bengal government ordered an inquiry into the killing of All India Gorkha League president Madan Tamang in Darjeeling on Friday.
Adopting a more aggressive posture on the letter controversy, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Sunday questioned how Home Minister P Chidambaram used "Trinamool Congress' language" in his missive but remained silent on the party's link with the Maoists.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday put the onus on West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to give a reply to Home Minister P Chidambaram's letter which asked the government to disarm CPI-M cadres in the state. "The home minister has written to the state government. He has fulfilled his responsibility. Now the state government should fulfil its responsibility and reply by acknowledging receipt of the letter," he said.
India's third largest service provider Wipro Technologies, is set to begin construction on Rajarhat campus, the second in the city, 'as quickly as possible', said state information technology minister, Debesh Das.
The Trinamool Congress attacked West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Tuesday for asking P Chidambaram to 'mind' his language following the Union home minister's 'buck stops with you' remark.
Industry was the most obvious casualty of the Left's excesses. Now what lies ahead for the state?
Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata was in Kolkata on May 18, 2006, the day Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee started his second innings as chief minister of West Bengal, to announce the Nano small car project.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist on Monday ruled out any change in leadership following the poll debacle in West Bengal and Kerala as top leaders met in New Delhi to analyse what went wrong for the party in the assembly elections.
All the five former Indian Police Service officers fielded by the Trinamool Congress won comfortably, while TC nominee and former chief secretary Manish Gupta humbled Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, his one time boss.
A eight-member central team, headed by Joint Secretary in Union Agriculture Ministry E K Majhi, will visit drought-hit districts of West Bengal on Wednesday.
His own party -- the Communist Party of India Marxist -- might have sidelined him. But V S Achuthanandan -- the octogenarian chief minister of Kerala, has eventually found a place in the international arena of communism.And Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee -- once the 'poster boy' of communist governance in a capitalist society -- will miss a chair as his party organises the 11th Communist and Workers Parties International Meeting to discuss a rescue path from the financial crisis.
The Trinamool Congress will file a defamation suit against the Communist Party of India-Marxist and West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for equating the party with the Maoists.
The West Bengal government has not given up industrialisation of the state, including finalising an alternate project for Singur, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said.
The group, led by West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and state secretary Biman Bose, feels the "timing of the withdrawal" in July 2008 was "wrong". The group will seek a review of this decision in the forthcoming extended Central Committee meeting of the party in Vijayawada in August and also question other decisions of the party that are alleged to have led to the debacle in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.
The West Bengal government on Thursday lodged a fresh complaint with the Centre against Trinamool Congress, accusing it of having a 'nexus' with Maoists.In a letter to Home Minister P Chidambaram, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee cited the arrest of two persons from a Trinamool Congress-run camp in Midnapore who allegedly had Maoist links. "The chief minister sent a letter to the Union home minister on the arrest of 2 persons on Monday with Maoist links," said sources.
In the backdrop of their "letter war" over the political killings in West Bengal, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Wednesday met Union Home Minister P Chidambaram and discussed with him the prevailing situation in the poll-bound state.
The West Bengal chief minister did not have anything new to offer to Singur and its people, except that the site would be used for an industrial project.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, once the poster boy of development for the Communist Party of India-Marxist, has come under fire in the party's latest 'rectification' campaign.
Charging Home Minister P Chidambaram with adopting a 'partisan approach', the Communist Party of India - Marxist on Monday said the purpose of his letter to the West Bengal government on the alleged role of armed CPI-M cadres was meant to 'serve the political interests of Trinamool Congress'. The party also sought an explanation from him, saying the media was briefed about his letter to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee even before it reached the state government.
Chidambaram's strong letter to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee comes in the wake of ally Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee alleging misuse of central security forces in the state and offering to quit if her charge was proved wrong.
The district Congress has filed a complaint against West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee accusing him of making "provocative" speech at a public meeting in Coochbehar.
The Bengal intelligentsia that stood by Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mamata Banerjee is now divided on how to resolve the fracas at Lalgarh -- a generic name that represents the Naxal-stricken tribal heartland of West Bengal.
The Gorkha Janamukti Morcha today rejected West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's offer of more autonomy, power and funds for Darjeeling hills, saying it would not rest till its demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland is met.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Thursday admitted that terrorists were using the metropolis as a haven.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has said that the decision of the Tata Group to withdraw from the Singur project was a colossal one.
For Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the transition from a 'people's man' to corporate India's preferred chief minister was rapid, albeit with a cataclysmic effect.
Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, met the chief minister and formally accepted the plot offered in New Town Rajarhat, on the north-eastern fringes of this city.
Karat admits that creation of the Third Front was a wrong move.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will not attend the full session of the Communist Party of India(M) extended central committee meeting in Vijayawada. Bhattacharjee's move comes days after Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan's decision to stay away from the meet.
West Bengal Home Secretary Ardhendu Sen, whose statement on Maoist links with the Trinamool Congress put the administration in an uncomfortable position, had more trouble on Tuesday, when a senior minister called for action against him for his remarks.
In a freewheeling interview with a daily, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has admitted that corruption has influenced the CPI-M's rank and file and some of its leaders are behaving like 'local kings'. "We are living in a society which is basically corrupt" and it had influenced "our leaders and our boys" too, he said. But the Bengal CM was quick to add that the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress was not the change the state needed.
The West Bengal government on Thursday said it was formulating rules to ensure that schools do not create fear among students as physical and mental torture pose hindrance to their natural development.
After a meeting with Buddhadeb, Indrani -- the wife of officer-in-charge of Sankrail police station, Atindranath Dutta -- said they had conveyed to the chief minister Maoist leader Kishenji's demand that the women arrested by joint forces in West Midnapore district be released immediately.
With successive electoral setbacks in Panchayat, Lok Sabha and municipal polls in the past three years, Left leaders in Bengal have realised that there has been a steady and serious erosion in their traditional vote bank among the urban and rural poor.
A poll update from Maharashtra's Nashik, where Raj Thackeray is on fire
The long-awaited meeting between Union Home Minister P Chidambaram and West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to discuss the law and order situation in the state would take place on January 19 in Delhi. The chief minister would also meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the same day. "The chief minister is going to Delhi on January 18 to meet the home minister and prime minister the next day," the sources said.
Continuing to bicker with West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee through letters, Home Minister P Chidambaram has described the killings of political workers in the state as 'alarming' and said that the violence points to a virtual collapse of law and order in some parts of Bengal. He also said he used the word Harmad (hired killers) in an earlier letter because of its extensive usage in the media.
A directional landmine blast took place at Baroa, 17 km from Salboni, from where the West Bengal CM, Paswan, state industry minister Nirupam Sen and industrialist Sajjan Jindal were returning after laying the foundation stone of Jindal Steel Works plant, police said.
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