The Election Commission is expected to initiate a phased, pan-India special intensive revision (SIR) of the voters' list, prioritizing states with upcoming assembly elections. This cleanup exercise aims to weed out illegal foreign migrants and ensure accurate electoral rolls.
A delegation of Opposition leaders in Maharashtra, including Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray, and Raj Thackeray, met with the state's chief electoral officer to raise concerns about alleged irregularities in the poll process, particularly regarding the voters' list, ahead of local body elections.
Polling began on Tuesday morning for the fourth of the six phase West Bengal assembly election across 63 constituencies spread over Howrah, Hooghly, East Midnapur and parts of Burdwan district.
The Election Commission is ramping up preparations for a special intensive revision of voter lists across India, assessing the progress made on mapping current electors with voters as per the last SIR in different states.
Senior Congress leader and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee resigned as chief of party's West Bengal unit on Sunday citing "heavy government responsibilities", and Congress Legislature Party leader Manas Ranjan Bhunia was appointed to the post by Sonia Gandhi.
Victory wrested from regime that only listens when forced, the TMC said on GST exemption on insurance.
The elections are not only a means for TMC to prove its wide, unopposed mass allegiance but also a way to bargain for national leadership among regional political parties in the road to New Delhi.
46 per cent of MPs facing criminal charges and 31 per cent serious cases.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Karat dismissed a suggestion that the CPI (M) considered the EC as its 'enemy.'
The incident comes two days after the Bharatiya Janata Party claimed that its worker Trilochon Mahato, 20, who was found hanging from a tree at Balarampur in the district on May 30, was killed by the Trinamool Congress. However, the Trinamool Congress has denied the allegations and termed it as baseless.
The West Bengal government on Friday ordered the shutdown of all shopping malls, salons, restaurants, bars, sports complexes, gyms, spas and swimming pools in the state with immediate effect until further orders, amid the surge in Covid-19 cases.
The Trinamool Congress on Friday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of spreading lies and criminalising poverty over the detention of Bengali-speaking migrant workers in Odisha, while the saffron party charged the Mamata Banerjee dispensation with providing shelters to illegal immigrants.
Three persons, including husband of a Communist Party of India-Marxist candidate, were killed on Monday and several others injured in violence during the second phase of panchayat elections in West Bengal where 75 per cent polling was recorded.
The CMs with lowest assets are West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee with assets worth over Rs 15.38 lakh, Omar Abdullah, CM of Jammu and Kashmir, with assets worth over Rs 55.24 lakh, and Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, who has assets worth Rs 1.18 crore.
'In times of adversity, families unite, but the reverse is happening in the Lalu family.'
Modi warned that when demographic changes take place, especially in the border areas, they create a national security crisis.
The couple met during morning walks, and the relationship grew over time.
The CPI-M leader was the chief minister of the state from 2000 to 2011.
Justice Gavai's comment came while the apex court bench, also comprising Justice Augustine George Masih, was considering a fresh plea seeking an inquiry into the recent violence in West Bengal during anti-Waqf law protests.
'Are elections still fair in India, or are we all witness to a macabre style of 'selection' of lawmakers? The jury will be out on this for a long time because there is no definitive evidence on either contention, at least as yet,' notes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author, Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal said the agency cannot cast aspersions on the entire judiciary in West Bengal.
'The chief minister believes the poorest of the poor have the first right on government resources.'
Trinamool Congress (TMC) has appointed Abhishek Banerjee as its new parliamentary leader in the Lok Sabha, replacing Sudip Bandopadhyay. The decision was made during a virtual meeting chaired by Mamata Banerjee. This move is seen as a generational shift and a preparation for the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections.
Addressing a massive Martyrs' Day rally in Kolkata, Banerjee gave a clarion call to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2026 assembly elections and eventually oust it from power at the Centre, declaring, "If this linguistic profiling doesn't stop, our resistance movement will reach New Delhi."
Indrani Roy/Rediff.com explains what strengthened the saffron party's foothold in this eastern region of the country
Former Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar has requested a government bungalow, as per his entitlement, following his resignation. The Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry is considering his request.
The BJP's MoSha leadership are past masters in encouraging defections from their allies if it helped their party capture the chief minister's chair. In Bihar, they are not sure if JD-U MPs and MLAs would be willing to cross over to the BJP if the Nitish leadership came on top -- and the NDA crossed the halfway mark together, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Left to its machinations, the BJP would have loved to cut Nitish down to size, but it can't afford to do so as the JD-U is in alliance with the BJP at the Centre, and cannot form a government on its own in Bihar. For now, both need each other: Nitish for legitimacy, the BJP for numbers, points out Ramesh Menon.
The National Democratic Alliance was set to sweep the Bihar assembly polls, surging ahead in over 200 of 243 seats on Friday with the Bharatiya Janata Party emerging as single largest party with about 90 per cent strike rate, reaffirming the popularity and campaign clout of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the face of the ruling alliance through the poll battle in the highly sensitive political state.
After big win in Bihar, the BJP is likely to push harder in Tamil Nadu, where the DMK government and the uneasy BJP-AIADMK alliance are preparing for a tense election filled with seat-sharing fights, changing alliances, and the unpredictable entry of Vijay's TVK party, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
A female student of primary school was killed in Kaliganj in West Bengal's Nadia district on Monday after bombs were allegedly hurled from a Trinamool Congress victory celebration rally taken out even before the results of the assembly bypoll were officially announced.
'There is no provision for a specific salary for the vice president; instead, they receive remuneration and benefits commensurate with their role as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha.'
Abhijit Mukherjee, son of former Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, has rejoined the Indian National Congress after a four-year stint in the Trinamool Congress. He was welcomed back into the party by Congress leaders in Kolkata, marking a significant development in West Bengal politics.
If he cannot do it this term by using his bureaucracy and experts from different fields, it will be a tragedy, asserts Ramesh Menon.
The TMC-led West Bengal government has already started laying the groundwork for the election, setting the tone with the recent Bengal Global Business Summit and the state Budget.
The Election Commission has advised the West Bengal Governor to call off his proposed tour of Cooch Behar on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls' first phase as it was violative of the Model Code of Conduct, sources said on Wednesday.
The RSS which catapulted Jagdeep Dhankar to national prominence after 21 years of hibernation could not come to his rescue when BJP higher ups decided to seek his resignation, points out Prakash Bhandari.
The state's final electoral rolls would be published by February 15.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has set an ambitious goal of winning over 215 seats in the 2026 state assembly elections, aiming to secure a fourth consecutive term for the Trinamool Congress (TMC). She declared that the party will work to significantly reduce the BJP's tally and ensure that their candidates struggle to retain their deposits. The TMC's national general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, echoed this sentiment, urging party workers to ensure a decisive victory and achieve a two-thirds majority in the upcoming polls. The BJP, however, dismissed the TMC's claims, stating that Banerjee is merely trying to boost morale among party workers.
Mamata Banerjee was on Friday sworn in as the chief minister of West Bengal for the second consecutive time, heading a 42-member ministry.
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