Hossain, the minister of state for labour, was injured in the bomb blast on Wednesday night at Nimtita railway station in Murshidabad district.
Tag: West Bengal
-
Bengal elections: COVID vaccination of polling officials to begin on February 22
By PTI
KOLKATA: The COVID-19 inoculation process of polling officials who will be involved in the ensuing assembly elections in West Bengal will commence from February 22, a senior health official said.“All polling officials are considered as frontline workers and as per the rule, must be vaccinated before the election process starts in West Bengal. We will commence the inoculation programme for such workers from Monday,” he said.
State Health Secretary N S Nigam had recently held a virtual meeting with the district magistrates and health officials in this connection, sources in the Health Department said.
All district magistrates have been directed to send the lists of polling officials who will be inoculated first, he said.
Nearly 4.5 lakh polling officials will be involved in the election process in the state, a source in the Chief Election Office said.
Elections to the 294-member state assembly are due in April-May.
-
Modi to target Mamata over Bengal’s poor investment
By Express News Service
KOLKATA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit West Bengal on February 22 and address a rally in Chinsurah, the industrial zone of Hooghly district. Chinsurah was selected strategically as his previous rally was in East Midnapore district which is known as Bengal’s agricultural region, sources in the BJP said.As Modi had addressed farmers on February 7, the sources said, he will deliver a message on investment from a place from where Tata Motors were “driven out” by the ruling Trinamool Congress. “It was Mamata Banerjee who had spearheaded a movement against the forcible land acquisition in Singur, Hooghly, and driven out Tata Motors. Since then, Bengal has not any seen any investment. Our party functionaries both national and state are promising investment.
The Hooghly visit will send a message that the BJP is equally focused on farmers and investment,’’ said a senior BJP leader. The BJP’s state functionaries have decided to finding out a venue on the bank of the Hooghly, as factories are located along the riverside and most of them are closed. “We have identified two places. One is adjoining to Chinsurah court and the other is near the closed Dunlop factory on the outskirts of the district headquarters. Both the venues are on the bank of the Hooghly.
We want the PM to address the rally from the venue near Dunlop factory. It will send a message highlighting the sorry state of investment in Bengal,’’ said another BJP leader. Chinsurah is under Hooghly Lok Sabha constituency which the BJP had bagged in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP leader said the Bengal state functionaries has requested the party’s high command for bringing Amit Shah in Singur but it is yet to get a nod from Delhi.
-
Decomposed bodies of brother and sister found in West Bengal
By PTI
BARASAT: A 33-year-old man and his elder sister were found dead at their residence on Saturday in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, police said.Their decomposed bodies were recovered from a flat at RB Road under the Dumdum Police Station limits, they said.
The neighbours informed the police about the stench emanating from the house, following which they broke open the door and found the dead bodies, a senior officer said.
The man’s body was found lying on the floor, while his sister, aged 45, was found hanging from the ceiling, he said.
The bodies were sent for postmortem.
According to the police, they had rented the flat and have been staying there for the last six years.
A preliminary investigation suggested that they were facing a financial problem.
-
Left Front calls for 12-hour bandh in West Bengal today
By ANI
KOLKATA: The Left Front has called for 12-hour bandh in West Bengal today after its workers were allegedly beaten up during a march to Nabanna in Kolkata on Thursday.According to sources, the Left parties will also take out a rally at 10 am today.
The streets of Siliguri remained deserted today in support of the bandh called by the Left Front. The bandh, however, did not affect the public transport in the state.
“The Left Front has called for 12 hours bandh in West Bengal on Friday from to protest over the incident where left party workers were beaten up and water cannons were used against them by Police during a march to Nabanna in Kolkata,” said Left Front Chairman Biman Bose on Thursday.
The bandh will remain effective from 6 am in the morning to 6 pm in the evening, he added.
Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress (TMC)-led West Bengal Government mandated the presence of all employees of the State Government at their offices on Friday.
“All-State Government offices, including those provided with Grants-in-aid by State Government, shall remain open and all employees shall report for duty. No casual leave for absence or any leave shall be granted to any employee nor shall there be any exemption on the ground of shift allocation,” read a circular.
-
Bengal govt effects police reshuffle before assembly polls
By PTI
KOLKATA: The West Bengal government on Saturday appointed Soumen Mitra as the new commissioner of Kolkata Police, and transferred incumbent Anuj Sharma as additional director general of the state CID before the state assembly polls.Jawed Shamim will be the new additional director general, law and order, of the West Bengal Police, taking over from Gyanwant Singh, the state government said in an order.
Ajay Kumar Nand will be the new commissioner of Barrackpore Police Commissionerate and Supratim Sarkar will take over as the Bidhanagar Police commissioner, it said.
Mitra has been holding the post of ADG, Training, of West Bengal Police, while Shamim is special commissioner I of Kolkata Police.
Elections to the 294-member state assembly are due in April-May this year.
-
Mamata govt deprived farmers benefit of PM Kisan Scheme to ‘satisfy her ego’: JP Nadda
Nadda reaffirmed the BJP and the Narendra Modi government #39;s commitment to the welfare of the farming community.
-
Mamata Banerjee presents vote-on-account for Rs 2.99 lakh crore in House, Opposition boycotts speech
By PTI
KOLKATA: With state elections round the corner, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday presented a vote-on-account for Rs 2.99 lakh crore in the Assembly, and made a slew of announcements, including a hike in the annual aid of farmers.The estimates for the first few months of the new fiscal, starting April, would be taken up for discussion over the next two days, before it is passed by the House.
Banerjee, during the assembly session, said her government has worked tirelessly for the state’s overall development, despite not getting necessary help from the central government.
“We have decided to build 20 lakh houses for the SC and ST communities and upgrade mud houses into pucca ones.
We are allocating Rs 1,500 crore for the project. We have also decided to provide aid to government-recognized unaided madrasas, and Rs 50 crore has been allotted for the same.”
The chief minister also said that the budget, under the government’s ‘Krishak Bandhu’ scheme, has been increased to Rs 6,000 crore from Rs 5,000 crore, keeping in mind the interest of farmers.
“We will build 100 new schools in tea garden areas. Additionally, 100 new English-medium schools would also come up in areas dominated by SC and ST communities.
For this, we plan to recruit at least 300 para teachers,” she said.
The feisty TMC boss further stated that her government has agreed to implement the centrally funded PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme in Bengal.
Stressing the need to develop infrastructure, Banerjee said rural roads, spanning 46,000 km, would be built in the state in the next five years.
“By next year, we plan to build 10,000 km of rural roads, all of which will be connected with state highways….We will also build four new flyovers in the city, including one stretching from E M Bypass to Newtown and the other from Paikpara to Sealdah station,” she said.
She said her government plans to generate 1.5 crore new jobs in Bengal, and vacancies in government offices would be filled as part of the initiative.
“We also propose to waive road tax from January 1 to June 30 this year,” Banerjee said.
The CM, during the presentation, said the state government plans to build a state-level planning commission as a mark of tribute to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
“We will build Jai Hind Bhawan in every district and Azad Hind Smaark at Newtown,” she said.
She maintained that ‘Duare Sarkar’ camps, where people get to enrol their names to avail benefits of state-run schemes, would be set up twice every year.
Finance Minister Amit Mitra, who is currently unwell, skipped Friday’s assembly session, which was marked by unruly scenes during the day.
BJP legislators trooped into the Well of the Assembly, demanding that Mitra, and not Banerjee, should be reading out the vote-on-account. Later, they walked out of the House. Left Front and the Congress MLAs also boycotted the session.
-
Authorised CM to perform duties related to finacial statement presentation: Bengal Governor
By PTI
KOLKATA: West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar said on Thursday that he has authorised Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to perform all duties in the Assembly related to the presentation of the annual financial statement for 2021-22 and the motion for vote on account.Dhankhar tweeted that the authorisation was given following communication with state finance minister Amit Mitra and speaker of the Assembly, Biman Banerjee.
“Governor of West Bengal has authorized Chief Minister Ms. Mamata Banerjee to perform in the Assembly all duties relating to presentation of Annual Financial Statement of the Government of West Bengal for the year 2021-2022 and Motion for Vote on Account & all related aspects,” he tweeted.
A vote on account, which entails an incumbent government to seek a sanction for administrative expenditure, will be presented before the House on Friday as Assembly elections are due to be held in the state in April-May.
-
Heritage trees more beneficial than construction of railway over bridges: Experts tell SC
By PTI
NEW DELHI: The 300 heritage trees that are to be chopped for the construction of five railway over bridges in West Bengal are valued at Rs 2.2 billion in terms of oxygen and other products they offer which means a living tree will be more beneficial than the project, an expert committee has told the Supreme Court.A heritage tree is a large tree that takes decades or centuries to mature.
The committee of experts told a bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde that a heritage tree serves the civil society and the environment and its valuation can be reached on various counts including oxygen, micro-nutrients, compost and bio-fertiliser.
It said that if all costs are added and multiplied by the remaining age of a tree, in the present case 100 years, the grand total would be Rs 74,500 per tree year.
“This means that 300 trees if allowed to live for a period of 100 or more years, will give products worth Rs 2,235,000,000 or Rs 2.2 billion.
This is the future value of 300 trees. If the entire stretch of 59.2-kilometre road is taken in into consideration, which will become congested in a period of a decade or so, authorities will be forced to widen its width and on this count 4,056 trees will be required to be cut down.
“In that case, the cost of products over a period of 100 years will be Rs 30.21 billion.
So to avoid this environmental catastrophe a solution out of routine framework is need of the hour,” the committee said in its report.
The five proposed bridges are part of a ‘Setu Bharatam Mega Project’ financed by the Centre to build 208 rail over- and under-bridges across 19 states in the country with a sanctioned cost of Rs 20,800 crore.
The five-member committee informed the apex court that before implementing a project of national importance environmental impact assessment is desired and this has not been done in West Bengal.
The committee said that state authorities are considering project under consideration as an independent project which is affecting a distance of 59.2 km only from Barasat to Bongaon.
“According to a circular issued by MoEF, if a road project has a length less than 100 km, in that case, there is no need to get EIA from any government agency.
Such an argument, in the present case, is an attempt to circumvent the law of the land.
“We feel deriving such conclusion is erroneous and needs rethinking on the part of the state of the West Bengal.
According to the committee members, EIA should be taken up before starting the project related work,” the panel said.
Noting the submissions, the top court observed that it would consider laying down a protocol to be followed for projects like road widening project which require cutting of trees so that there is minimum damage to the environment.
The observation came while hearing a plea related to felling of over 350 trees for the construction of railway over bridges (ROB) and widening of National Highway-112 on the Indo-Bangladesh border in West Bengal.
The bench has now posted the matter for hearing on February 18.
The apex court had earlier formed a committee of environment experts to suggest an alternative to felling of over 350 trees for construction of railway over bridges (ROB) and widening of National Highway-112 along the Indo-Bangladesh border in West Bengal.
The five-member committee is headed by Dr Soham Pandya of the Centre of Science For Village, Wardha.
Bhushan, appearing for petitioner Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) had earlier said that no alternatives were explored and permission was granted to fell the trees, which are heritage ones aged around 80-100 years.
He had said everyone knows about global warming and there is study which says if the vegetation is not protected then in next 10-20 years the human species will be in danger.
The Calcutta High Court on August 31, 2018, had paved the way for widening of the national highway and allowed felling of over 350 trees for widening of Jessore Road, which connects the city to Petrapole on the Indo-Bangladesh border, on the condition that five trees will be planted for each tree cut.
The NH-112 or Jessore Road is an important link between India and Bangladesh and the state government had undertaken a project to widen it.
Hundreds of old trees line both sides of the road, some of which were decided to be felled for the purpose of widening of the road.
A PIL was moved before the high court challenging the state’s plan to fell the trees.
After arguments for several months, the high court allowed the felling of 356 trees at five places from Barasat to Petrapole border along the Jessore Road.