KOLKATA: Claiming the high phase-one turnout as a decisive mandate against both BJP and SIR, CM Mamata Banerjee on Friday predicted that the party would not win even half the 77 seats it held after 2021 — and warned it would be dislodged from Delhi as well.“Yesterday in rural Bengal, 93% were against you, Modi-babu,…
Kolkata: Kolkata’s cultural fraternity assembled on Friday evening in front of the Academy of Fine Arts to protest the arrest warrant issued against poet Srijato Bandyopadhyay following a complaint lodged by a Nadia-based lawyer. This meet was organised by the Desh Banchao Gana Mancha.Srijato had posted a 12-line poem, ‘Abhisaap’, after Yogi Adityanath was sworn…
Kolkata: Kolkata Police has verbally advised all officers — from sub-inspectors and above posted at police stations, and preferably assistant sub-inspectors — to remain stationed at their respective police stations, including at night, until the end of the polls so they are readily available on call.Several OCs said the “verbal advisory” reflects mounting operational pressure…
Kolkata: The city’s heart has beaten for the Trinamool, but in a desperate attempt to add some drama to an uneven contest, BJP fielded Santosh Pathak, an immensely popular Congress councillor from ward 45, in the Chowringhee assembly constituency. The urban seat has witnessed the heaviest voter deletions among Kolkata’s assembly constituencies — 87,725 —…
Kolkata: In north Kolkata’s tightly packed political theatre, which saw one of the fiercest Trinamool-BJP pre-poll clashes, Sashi Panja is fighting an election that is as much about arithmetic as it is about narrative.One of the top confidantes of CM Mamata Banerjee and a three-term MLA from Shyampukur in north Kolkata, where her father-in-law and…
Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Friday scrapped EC’s 48-hour bike ban order for the April 29 phase-2 poll and said pillion riding will not be allowed on two-wheelers for 12 hours on poll day, unless it is for dropping or picking children from school, medical emergencies or family functions. The HC did not interfere…
Kolkata: No one is predicting whether the second phase of polling in Bengal next Wednesday will beat Thursday’s unprecedented turnout of 92.9% (revised on Friday). But everyone, including politicians and voters themselves, is sure of one thing: the second phase, too, is on course to see a heavy turnout of voters. And the factor that…
Nandigram: During the polls of 2021, a wheelchair-bound Mamata Banerjee chose Nandigram’s Boyal as her anchorage, scripting one of the defining moments of a razor-edge contest. In 2026, it was Suvendu Adhikari — once her opponent, now facing aide-turned-foe Pabitra Kar — choosing the same Boyal as his basecamp. It’s here that all eyes tracking…
JALPAIGURI: A tense domestic drama unfolded at booth no. 25/238 in Phansidewa’s Tarabari, under the Matigara-Naxalbari assembly segment in Siliguri subdivision, on Thursday — when a man staked out a polling station for hours to intercept his wife, who had eloped with another man two years ago.He had reasoned, correctly, that she would have to…
BEHRAMPORE: For 70-year-old Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, a five-term MP returning to the assembly fray after three decades, poll day began not at a booth but inside a makeshift war room at his Kasimbazar residence, about 5km from Behrampore town.Chowdhury, who represented Behrampore in the Lok Sabha five times between 1999 and 2019, suffered a setback…
