If the BJP wins Bengal, would Kishor's indiscretions have played a significant role in that victory? Victory for the TMC would be another badge of honour in his CV, but defeat would raise an unsavoury question: Which party was Kishor actually working for? asks Payal Singh Mohanka.
Biswas, 64, complained of chest pain at the Howrah station after his return from New Delhi. He was admitted to the Medical College Hospital where he breathed his last.
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.
Shah, who held a closed door meeting to take stock of the party organisation, said he could 'sense massive public anger' against the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government in the state and gave a call to 'uproot' it in the state polls.
Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha leader Derek O' Brien met the agitating farmers at the Singhu border in the afternoon.
'Mamata will beat the living daylights out of BJP workers with the result that people who are not totally committed, they will promptly leave the party and go back to Trinamool.' 'Or when they find they cannot get what they came to the BJP for they will go back to Trinamool.'
As state minister Suvendu Adhikari, along with other functionaries, openly air grievances against the Mamata Banerjee-led dispensation, senior leaders are frantically looking for ways to pacify the rebels.
As their parties are locked in a fierce battle for Bengal, Tathagata and Saugata Roy, siblings who belong to the BJP and the TMC respectively, answer the same questions put to them about the assembly election.
The top ten richest candidates are from the Trinamool Congress which has won a second consecutive term.
Bhaichung Bhutia, India's iconic former football captain, is set to try his political luck again, this time in his native state of Sikkim, as he plans to contest the assembly elections due this year.
Fears of the Congress not having a credible face, after the death of its three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit last July, and ceding its vote bank to the Aam Aadmi Party came true with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party capturing the space once occupied by the grand old party.
The Mamata Banerjee-led party, which has often been mocked by opponents for not having a well-defined ideological plank, seems to have finally found its calling in Bengali sub-nationalism, as a section of top party leaders feel only an 'inclusive message of regionalism, which the Bengalis can identify with, will counter the aggressive nationalism and Hindutva practised by the saffron camp'.
'Mamata is an emotional person, she follows her heart.' 'We loved that Didi, we still love her, but she is a changed person.' 'Why and how the change happened, who is responsible, I can't say.'
Kerala, Punjab and Rajasthan are the other three states to pass a resolution opposing the contentious legislation, reports Archis Mohan.
'Mamata has used minorities only as her vote bank.' 'In her entire election campaign Mamata did not utter a single sentence against the RSS.'
Changing a state's name requires constitutional amendment and it is done after taking into consideration all relevant factors, he said.
She has been given training for handling polling booth and tackling challenges like other presiding officers.
The manner in which a large proportion of common people have mortgaged their rationality and questioning spirit to let hatred, prejudice, and bigotry take over their minds is a cause of worry, observes Mohammad Sajjad.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday shared stage with the leaders of the Left Front
The incident, West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar said, has put the country's democratic history to "shame".
'I am as Bengali as they come in my cultural and personal orientation and I think probably all the BJP candidates who are contesting are pretty non-vegetarian in their food and as Bengali in their cultural orientation.'
For now, the BJP's strategy for Khushbu seems to be one of denial -- denying the rival Congress in the state and also at the national-level a Muslim voice acceptable to Hindu audiences and TV news-watchers. This is much less than the induction of DMK veterans like Duraiswamy and Selvam, who still have a greater chances of winning assembly seats,, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'It did not start as a Hindutva slogan.' 'It started to tease the TMC and slowly it got internalised and the BJP started countering with Jai Shri Ram slogans because Mamata was getting provoked.'
A high voter turnout was recorded in West Bengal, Assam Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry assembly elections on Tuesday. The massive polling exercise following COVID-19 health protocol and involving lakhs of personnel began at 7 am and the last hour from 6 pm to 7 pm was set aside for COVID-19 patients and those under isolation. The counting of votes in the states will be held on May 2.
Yechury could play the role Harkishan Singh Surjeet had played in 1996 and 2004 to unify the opposition, writes Archis Mohan.
Taking a dig at Narendra Modi for his poll campaign in north eastern states, the Shiv Sena on Monday said the prime minister should have taken out time to visit drought-hit Marathwada as well.
'If the chief minister says there are areas in her home state where she cannot enter, where has she driven the state to!'
While Yechury feels CPI-M should unite with others to fight the 'growing danger of fascistic forces', Karat camp says it should fight the BJP, but not have any leaning towards the Congress or other opposition parties.
Several police officers who followed the Election Commission's orders during the recent West Bengal assembly polls get punishment transfers. Payal Mohanka reports.
Dissident Trinamool Congress MP Somen Mitra on Friday said he has decided to leave the party and go back to the Congress, while stating he would resign from his Lok Sabha membership first.
With two years to go before West Bengal elects its next government, the BJP's internal objective is to scale down the Trinamool Congress tally from 211 to 45 seats. This amounts to an annihilation of the TMC while enabling the BJP to win a record 250 seats in the 295-member legislature, reports Radhika Ramaseshan
The matter was brought into public domain by the BJP's West Bengal unit president Dilip Ghosh who took to Twitter to slam the government for its directive.
Yechury has dropped enough hints that a fight is in the offing at the Hyderabad conclave in April, where any member may move an amendment to the draft on the party's electoral line. Archis Mohan reports.
Of the 294 candidates declared with serious criminal cases, 76 were from the TMC, 52 from the BJP, 47 from the CPI-M and 31 from the Congress.
Exit polls often go wrong in India because pollsters don't sample voters in the poorest parts of the country or the core support bases of different political parties, explains Professor Atanu Biswas of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.
The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday approved the biggest tax reform since Independence.
The Trinamool Congress won 211 seats.
Political economist Jayanta Roy Chowdhury analyses the 2016 West Bengal assembly election results.
In a virtual no-man's land ever since India became independent in 1947, more than 9,500 persons living in 51 enclaves in Coochbehar district are exercising their franchise for the first time on May 5.
A 10-time Lok Sabha MP, Chatterjee was a central committee member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, which he had joined in 1968. He was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2004 to 2009.
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