'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'
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said there is no alternative to the Trinamool Congress, and no other party can take its place in the state.
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.
The aircraft crashed somewhere near Alipurduar in Jalpaiguri district around 12:30 pm, a spokesman said. This is the seventh IAF aircraft crash this year and the third MiG to crash in the Dooars region of North Bengal.
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.
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.
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.
Social stigma and low testing are the key reasons for the high mortality rate among COVID-19 patients in West Bengal, where the disease, like elsewhere in the country, is still an urban phenomenon, experts say. The state's Trinamool Congress government has been drawing consistent criticism from the Centre and opposition parties over the way it has tackled the pandemic, and has been accused of under-reporting data about the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
Born with six toes on each foot, Swapna is stubborn from childhood, said the secretary of the Jalpaiguri District Athletics Association Ujjal Das Chowdhury, who has followed Swapna's career from close quarters.
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.
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.
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.
Its intensity surpassed that of other quakes in recent times and it was felt in the north Bengal region too.
The weather system moved west-northwestward and concentrated into a depression on Saturday at 8.30am, close to west of Andaman Islands, the bulletin said.
'If the BJP thinks it is going to overnight transform Bengal into Madhya Pradesh, sorry, that's not going to happen because I have faith in our ethos and culture.'
The West Bengal chief minister said no refugee living in the state will be deprived of citizenship. "You have an address, ration card, voter card, driving licence. There is no need to get this new card of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Don't worry, you will always find this didi beside you. Your family is my family. I will not let anybody take away the rights of our people," she asserted.
The union minister went to the residence of Sanatan Singh at Balijhuri and had lunch there, sitting on the floor of the thatched house.
Among the bigwigs are Union ministers Amit Shah (Gandhinagar), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Parshottam Rupala (Rajkot), Pralhad Joshi (Dharwad) and SP Singh Baghel (Agra).
Post offices in Darjeeling, Kurseong, Kalimpong, Siliguri, Gangtok and Jalpaiguri have been earmarked for the purpose.
A delegation of Congress leaders met EC officials and raised several issues, including the use of pictures and large cut-outs of the prime minister in government buildings and colleges and demanded that those be removed to maintain a level-playing field in the upcoming parliamentary election.
'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.
'With the appeal of both the Left and the Congress fading, Banerjee fears the saffron brigade's inroads into her citadel,' says Sunanda K Datta-Ray.
The Calcutta high court on Tuesday allowed Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari to visit the restive Sandeshkhali village, while observing that it is surprising that the main accused Shajahan Sheikh has not been arrested by the state police so far.
Every passing day featuring parties within the INDIA alliance sniping at each other at state level is bad publicity for the alliance particularly given the proximity of the 2024 general elections, asserts Shyam G Menon.
Lakhs of people were rendered homeless as cyclone Amphan cut a path of destruction through half a dozen districts of West Bengal, including state capital Kolkata, Wednesday night, blowing away shanties, uprooting thousands of trees besides swamping low-lying areas.
In a letter to Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha, the central team in north Bengal, led by senior bureaucrat Vineet Joshi, said more field officers are required to monitor and provide feedback about the effectiveness of various measures undertaken by the government.
Sporadic incidents of violence and allegations of booth jamming marred the voting process in the second phase.
'For around five hours the storm, reportedly the strongest one ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal, that mother of many a deathly vortex, shook Kolkata like a toddler playing with a rattling toy,' observes Debashish Chatterjee.
Odisha has issued a fresh flood alert in wake of heavy rains under influence of cyclone Komen
The saffron party took out rallies in several parts of the state, with BJP workers sporting black badges.
'The primary set took over three months to build with 14,000-15,000 workers employed at a time.'
'We ensured that Mallikajaan's Shahi Mahal lived up to its name.' 'One zardosi panel cost around Rs 4 lakh; the one with the kalpavriksh was around Rs 5 lakh.'
Normal life in West Bengal was partially affected on Friday due to the 12-hour state-wide bandh called by the Left Front in protest against police action on its activists during their march towards state secretariat Nabanna.
If the Congress reached 90, it would have a pretty good chance of holding the BJP below the 272 mark. A hundred seats will rock national politics, argues Shekhar Gupta.
The latest edition of the grand opera that is Indian domestic season will begin in Bengaluru on Wednesday with the Duleep Trophy.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday announced Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fight again from Varanasi in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections as it named 34 Union ministers in the first list of 195 candidates.
The division bench said it deemed it appropriate to stay the special court's order and direct that the "accused person shall be treated to be in judicial custody till further orders".
Following is the gist of the controversy over sudden transfer of West Bengal Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay, who retired on Monday, to Delhi and related rules.
The system, which moved towards Bangladesh from north Bay of Bengal at a speed of 56 kmph caused moderate to heavy rain and squally weather in West Bengal's coastal districts of South 24 Parganas, North 24 Parganas and Purba Medinipur, dampening festive spirits on Deepavali and Kali Puja.
Modi reviewed the situation in West Bengal and Odisha with chief ministers Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik, two days after the cyclone, the worst in years, devastated their states.
Journalist Chayan Sarkar surfaced at Coochbehar on Friday after being missing for 5 days.
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