Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee is learnt to be under pressure within her party to get minister of state for urban development Saugata Roy made railway minister and elevated to Cabinet rank, sources said.

The CPI(M)’s beleaguered boss, Prakash Karat, is trying hard to get his wife Brinda renominated to the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal.

In a bid to stave off the growing pressure to step down, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat quickly rejected by the offer by Biman Bose, secretary of the party’s West Bengal state committee, to quit over the rout in the Assembly elections.

The Congress is all set to join the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal.

A virtual tsunami unleashed by Trinamul Congress chieftain Mamata Banerjee made history here on Friday — dethroning the longest-serving democratically-elected Communist government in the world. The star of Vladimir Lenin — to whom the state’s CPI(M)’s rulers routinely paid public tribute and whose photograph had pride of place in their offices — had well and truly dimmed after 34 long years.

The ouster from the red bastion, West Bengal, and defeat in Kerala has reduced the Left, particularly the CPI(M), to a near- irrelevance in the national politics. The Marxists now, hold power only in Tripura.

A few hours from now just could be the beginning of a green revolution in West Bengal. The Mamata brigade has already started preparing for what they believe is “inevitable” — a Trinamul Congress victory in the state Assembly elections.

In the midst of allegations and accusations against Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi on the 2002 communal carnage in the state, a debate is raging within the BJP to project him as the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the forthcoming general elections.

Controversy over the Bhushan tapes took a fresh turn on Thursday with the government forensic laboratory claiming that the CD was not doctored and it was a “continuous recording”. The Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory report claimed that the “recorded conversation is in continuity... no abrupt changes in speech signal detected.”

If Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee tried to woo Bengal with her painting skills, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee did with a song.