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 Calcutta high court on Friday observed that mob violence at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital was an absolute failure of state machinery in West Bengal.
'With sufficient gaps between polling dates, the BJP will have time to convert the 'fence-sitter' votes,' observes Payal Mohanka.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) in Delhi reprimanded Jadavpur University for submitting a "generic" report about the incident.
High drama was witnessed on the first day of the budget session of the West Bengal assembly on Monday as Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar was forced to table his inaugural address with Bharatiya Janata Party legislators staging a protest in the House over alleged violence in the recently concluded civic elections in the state.
Mussavir Hussain Shazib and Adbul Matheen Ahmed Taahaa were traced to their hideout near Kolkata and apprehended by an NIA team, they said.
Since the purported seizure on Friday night, social media has gone abuzz with gossip about her alleged relationship with the senior Trinamool Congress leader.
There have been media reports of Banerjee meeting Rahul Gandhi at his residence in New Delhi on Wednesday morning. A leading Bengali daily had reported the meeting.
He clarified that if the saffron party does any better than what he has predicted, he would quit his work.
The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday alleged that bribe money generated from corruption in a Delhi Jal Board (DJB) contract was 'passed on' as election funds to the Aam Aadmi Party that rules the national capital.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India-Marxist dubbed it a "cheap poll gimmick" to woo minority votes.
Widespread violence between supporters of the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party over alleged electoral malpractices in strife-torn Sandeshkhali marred the final phase of Lok Sabha polls in West Bengal on Saturday, resulting in injuries to a number of people.
Besides the national capital, polling will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir. Simultaneously, polling will be held for 42 assembly constituencies in Odisha.
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.
BJP's Adhikari said that an opposition MLA is usually appointed as the PAC chairperson following the norm, but the TMC misused that rule to appoint Roy as its chairman.
The 66-year-old leader's income for the year 2019-20 was Rs 10,34,370.
"Since the elections started in West Bengal, central government hatched conspiracies to remove us (from power). I was hurt in my feet so that I don't contest the polls," she said.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday termed the cancellation of over 25,000 school jobs as 'gross injustice' and alleged that it was a ploy by the Bharatiya Janata Party to stop these job losers from being deployed in poll duty.
In an interview with PTI, Roy praised the Union government for implementing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) rules, stating that it would benefit the refugee population, including the Matua community, who had fled neighbouring countries to escape religious persecution.
The court directed the state police to transfer all records and CCTV footage relating to the matter to the central government within two weeks.
Tiwari, who was also the Asansol civic body chief, quit the TMC on Thursday, following in the footsteps of the party's former heavyweight Suvendu Adhikari. Sources close to the leaders indicated that they may join the BJP soon, but things seems to have taken a different turn for Tiwari, as Supriyo and other BJP leaders opposed his entry into the saffron party.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea seeking direction for investigation by an independent probe agency like the Central Bureau of Investigation into the March 10 incident where West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had sustained leg injury after an alleged attack on her in Nandigram.
The unrest in the Sandeshkhali region of West Bengal ballooned into a major political row on Thursday as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee blamed the saffron camp of fomenting trouble in the area, while the Bharatiya Janata Party and the National Commission for Women (NCW) accused her party Trinamool Congress and the state government of being complicit in crimes against women in the area.
A Trinamool Congress legislator on Sunday threatened to not support any bill tabled by the government in the West Bengal Assembly in the future and abstain from voting in the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in the state if 'atrocities' on his loyalists allegedly by a rival faction continued, even as the Bharatiya Janata Party said the collapse of the Mamata Banerjee government was just a matter of time.
The apex court said the high court will be at liberty to take a fresh view on whether the investigation by the state police has been fair and proper, and if not, whether a case has been made out for the transfer of the investigation to the CBI.
The 6 am to 6 pm shutdown call evoked a mixed response as the state government engaged its entire machinery to ensure that normal life remained unaffected.
'She could have sat down with the students and taken a list of their grievances including their allegations and suspicions.' 'Not all suspicions are true, but you have to listen, you have to let the steam come out.'
One of the high-profile contests in the high-stakes Bengal polls is likely to be a direct fight between Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her former confidant and now BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram seat.
Addressing a big rally in Kolkata to launch the Bharatiya Janata Party's Lok Sabha campaign, Shah launched a blistering attack on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the issues of appeasement, infiltration, corruption and political violence, alleging she has "destroyed" the state.
Babun Banerjee expressed displeasure over the party re-nominating Prasun Banerjee from Howrah Lok Sabha seat in West Bengal.
She faced off against former disciple-turned-defector Suvendu Adhikari in a very different contest. It's not land acquisition, but an ego clash that has acquired, tragically, communal overtones, explains Kanika Datta.
Hitting back at Prashant Kishor, Kailash Vijayvargiya remarked that the country will lose a poll strategist after his part forms the government in the state after the upcoming elections in the state.
Bharatiya Janata Party's Sandeshkhali leader Gangadhar Koyal on Friday moved the Calcutta high court, claiming that technology-aided videos mimicking his voice were being circulated in a bid to defame him, and prayed for security be provided to him by central agencies.
The byelections are of critical importance to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who lost the assembly poll to Bharatiya Janata Party's Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram.
The Calcutta High Court on Monday rejected the anticipatory bail prayer of Trinamool Congress leader Sk Supiyan, who was the election agent of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram, in connection with a murder case being investigated by the CBI.
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.
Of the four assistant sub-inspectors, three are from Kaliaganj Police Station and one is from Raiganj Police Station.
The Trinamool Congress on Monday wrote to Kolkata Police Commissioner Soumen Mitra seeking 'necessary action' under the law against the Central Bureau of Investigaton officials who arrested three senior party leaders 'illegally'.
On Monday, the TMC leader had alleged that the returning officer of Nandigram did not order recounting of votes even after she demanded it as he feared for his life.
