A large voter turnout of more than 80 per cent despite sporadic incidents of violence and allegations of vote fraud on Thursday marked the second phase of West Bengal assembly polls.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday reviewed the post-cyclone situation and damages caused by Cyclone Yaas in the state at a meeting in Bhubaneswar where Odisha government demanded long term solutions to mitigate problems of repeated cyclones and provision of disaster resilient power systems.
Principal Secretary of the state health department Bibek Kumar, in his letter to the secretary of the Union ministry of health and family welfare on Friday, described the list as "an erroneous assessment" and said Bengal, keeping in view the parameters set by the Centre, has earmarked four "red" zones -- Kolkata, Howrah, North 24 Parganas and East Midnapore.
The BJP could win only 16 out of 57 seats where Shah campaigned.
The TMC chief has been complaining for long alleging that her rivals have brought in goons from other states to intimidate voters.
I'm still in a lot of pain, but I feel the pain of my people even more,Banerjee tweeted minutes before arriving at the venue.
Shah, who was accompanied by BJP national vice-president Mukul Roy, national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargya, was greeted with slogans of 'Amit Shah zindabad', 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' by party workers at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata.
Though a pyrrhic victory for the BJP, the party he chose to align himself against his former mentor Banerjee, it nevertheless is being seen as a morale booster for the saffron party as his former party, the Trinamool Congress under Banerjee's leadership, has garnered an overwhelming 213 seats out of 292 seats which went to polls.
A Trinamool Congress delegation met the Election Commission (EC) on Friday and demanded a high-level probe into an alleged attack on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram and claimed it was not an 'unfortunate incident', but a conspiracy.
Alleging that the BJP-led Centre was pursuing 'vendetta politics', West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appealed to the Union government to withdraw its order recalling Chief Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay and allow the senior bureaucrat to work for people amid the COVID-19 crisis.
"I appeal to everyone to maintain peace. I hope to be back on the field in the next few days," Banerjee said.
Banerjee said the state is targeting to shift at least 10 lakh people to safer places in a bid to avoid any loss of life.
Announcing the name of candidates for the West Bengal assembly polls, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said she will be contesting from the Nandigram constituency as announced earlier.
Nandigram today is a conglomeration of model villages fenced by its greenery.
It's a political gambit aimed at the BJP's Suvendu Adhikari who won the seat in 2016 as a TMC candidate, while also retroceding to the land movement that catapulted her to power.
When the BJP forms government in Bengal, the chief minister will be a son of the soil, he said at the rally amid loud cheers from his supporters.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee campaigning in tribal Paschim Medinipur district on Thursday for the coming state election asked "Marxist friends" not to vote for either the CPI-M or Congress, who are "cohorts of the communal BJP".
The brewing discontentment in the party may adversely impact the TMC's prospects in the next assembly polls due in April-May next year.
Former Bengal pace spearhead Ashoke Dinda, who is fighting from the Moyna constituency in Purba Medinipur district, said the BJP desperately wants BCCI chief Sourav Ganguly to join the party.
Amit Shah, who missed campaigning in Bihar, made a two-day trip to Bengal starting November 5 to oversee BJPs preparedness for the state polls.
'You don't win elections on the basis of borrowed players.' 'There is a great crisis of leadership for the BJP in Bengal'
A quick look at the 66-year-old leader's political journey in the mid-1970s shows how injuries and physical assaults have shaped her political career over the years.
A victory in Nandigram would not only establish him as one of the tallest BJP leaders in Bengal but would push him miles ahead of others in the chief ministerial race if the party is voted to power.
'The TMC has become a private limited company.'
'If the chief minister says there are areas in her home state where she cannot enter, where has she driven the state to!'
'Mamata is synonymous with Bengal, its culture, language, traditions.'
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