'At this moment, the Trinamool has an edge.'
Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday unveiled a 'development-oriented' manifesto for the upcoming assembly polls in West Bengal, promising an income scheme for all families, a student credit card and constitution of a task force to examine the inclusion of several communities under the OBC category.
While the opposition alliance is putting up a united front in Ghosi constituency in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand's Dumri, Dhanpur and Boxanagar in Tripura and Uttarakhand's Bageshwar, its constituents are contesting against each other in Dhupguri in West Bengal and Puthuppally in Kerala.
The Centre has asked him to join North Block on Tuesday but it cannot force an officer to join it without the permission of the state administration, Banerjee told a press conference.
While the days are still not that warm, nourish your soul with two unusual khichdis.
This would be the second cyclonic storm in the Arabian Sea this year.
Over 84 lakh voters in West Bengal will decide the political fate of 283 candidates on Thursday, when 35 assembly constituencies go to polls in the eighth and final phase, amid a raging second wave of Covid-19.
The Narendra Modi wave seems to have reached the Bengal shores, indicated by the more than two-fold increase in the membership of the Bharatiya Janata Party's state unit.
Protests were held in different parts of Kolkata, North 24 Parganas, Hooghly, Howrah, Birbhum, South 24 Parganas, Jalpaiguri districts, and Trinamool Congress supporters briefly blocked roads in some areas.
Suchana Seth, the CEO of an AI start-up arrested for allegedly killing her four-year-old son, was quiet throughout her journey from Goa to Karnataka in a taxi, said the driver of the vehicle on Friday.
The West Bengal government has taken all precautionary measures to deal with Cyclone Yaas, likely to hit the state on May 26, and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will stay at a control room set up for the purpose to monitor the situation, officials said.
The politicisation of ethnic sentiments in the state has coincided with the ascent of the BJP and increased activities of far right Hindu outfits, which organised rallies and other events on religious occasions such as Ram Navami a festival not very popular in West Bengal- unlike states in north India.
Stocks of smallcap and midcap companies, which had caught the fancy of retail investors, also feature in the portfolio of leading politicians in addition to bluechip stocks.
Sandeshkhali, a village in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, has been at the centre of a political storm for nearly a month and has witnessed unprecedented protests over allegations of sexual abuse by scores of women against a local Trinamool Congress leader.
In a first such action in India's electoral history, the Election Commission had Wednesday ordered campaigning in the nine West Bengal constituencies to end at 10 pm on Thursday, instead of 6 pm on Friday, in the wake of violence between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Trinamool Congress in Kolkata during Amit Shah's roadshow.
Raju Mahali and Geeta Mahali, who had hosted Amit Shah on April 25 during his visit to the area, on Wednesday joined the TMC in the presence of senior TMC leader and tourism minister Gautam Deb.
'Our study finds that only about 20% of Indians are vegetarians and the rest of the 80% are non-vegetarians or meat-eaters.'
Scattered incidents of violence, including torching of buses and clashes, occurred and 1,600 people were arrested during the 12-hour bandh.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee are among the star campaigners of the party for the October 30 bypolls to four Assembly seats in the state, but interestingly, the names of actor-turned-MP Nusrat Jahan and former BJP leader Babul Supriyo, who recently joined the TMC camp do not feature in the list.
The double mutant variant, also known as B.1.617, is mostly dominating Maharashtra (761), West Bengal (124), Delhi (107) and Gujarat (102).
Since bodies are still being found from the slush and debris left behind by the river in both the states, the exact casualty count will be clear in the next few days after collating the details, officials said.
One person was killed and six others were injured in a clash between the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal's Birbhum district, police said.
Wearing his infectious goofy grin, 'Samba Magician' Ronaldinho cast a spell on the football-crazy denizens of Kolkata as his arrival for a two-day visit in Kolkata ushered in an early onset of the Durga Puja festival.
Close to half of the total 543 Lok Sabha seats are bracing for multi-cornered fight this time, making the contest way more interesting and intense than it was in the 2019 elections.
Who owns a recipe, and should one fight over its origins?
In Phase 6, indications are that the BJP, which is defending 40 seats, will lose in double digits and gain in single digits. Not good, if you are the ruling party scrambling to earn a working majority, with just one phase left to go, argues Prem Panicker.
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.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party might conduct the Lok Sabha polls in December itself, claiming that all choppers have been booked by the saffron party for campaigning.
With normal life thrown out of gear by the region's worst weather disasters, the authorities scrambled in various parts of the state to restore normalcy.
'We cried our hearts out as we saw our huts going underwater. It was hard to believe that I was fast asleep at the same spot just 15-20 minutes ago'
138 members of Bharat Scouts and Guides from West Bengal, mostly aged between 10 and 15 years, braved their way back to New Jalpaiguri railway station from Sikkim before heading home to Barrackpore near Kolkata to narrate their harrowing experience.
Guha's remark drew a sharp reaction from the BJP, which termed it as an 'insult to the security forces'.
State Tourism Minister Bratya Basu said that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had directed the Tourism Department to go ahead with the setting up the board.
National Conference vice president Omar Abdullah said notifying the rules for the CAA days before the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections shows the Bharatiya Janata Party is not confident about winning 400 seats in the ensuing polls.
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.
Jha, who had been on run since Wednesday when four people breached security protocol inside and outside Parliament, walked inside a police station in the New Delhi district Thursday night and is now being interrogated by a counter intelligence team, the police source said.
This is possibly the first time Hasina's daughter will be by her mother's side during an official visit to close neighbour and ally India, and analysts believe this to be significant in many ways.
'Besides Ayodhya, the BJP lost in nine other constituencies with a Ramayana imprint; it tasted success only in Thrissur.' 'In Rameswaram, K Navaskani of the Indian Union Muslim League won with a 44% voteshare in a 84% Hindu constituency.' 'In the 21 seats in the Ayodhya and Varanasi regions, both crucial to the Hindutva project, the BJP won just 7.' 'It won just 3 out of 12 seats around Modi's constituency,' points out Krishna Prasad.
Security measures have been heightened in view of the violence in the previous phases, particularly the death of five people in Cooch Behar in the fourth phase of polling on April 10, an Election Commission official said.
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