The Trinamul Congress supremo, Ms Mamata Banerjee’s move to not contest Assembly polls is proving costly for the Marxists in Bengal. While the face of the Marxists, West Bengal chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, is virtually caged in his Jadavpur Assembly constituency, struggling to save his own berth, Ms Banerjee is all over the state touring and campaigning.

It’s saffron time for anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare. While the government is exercising extreme caution in dealing with Mr Hazare and his demands, which range from videographing panel meeting proceedings to electoral laws, the saffron bandwagon, starting from the RSS to Mr Narendra Modi to Mr L.K. Advani, is all praise for Mr Hazare.

A debate is raging within the Union government on whether to confer the Bharat Ratna, the nation’s highest civilian honour, on India’s cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar.
While political parties like the Shiv Sena and the BJP and even Maharashtra’s Congress chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan, have publicly urged the Centre to confer the award on Tendulkar, sources said the government “is not likely to act in a hurry”.

The proposed grand alliance between the Congress and Trinamul Congress in West Bengal has hit a major roadblock with Bengal PCC chief Manas Bhunia rushing to New Delhi with a list of 294 Congress cand

Sometime in the mid-80s, Bengal Congress organised a demonstration against the then mayor of Calcutta, Kamal Basu.

Ms Mamata Banerjee’s Railway Budget on Friday is expected to be her manifesto for the coming West Bengal Assembly election, in which her Trinamul Congress hopes to end the Left’s 34-year rule.

The CPI(M), which has been consistently targeting freedom fighter Veer Savarkar for violent trends in Sangh politics, in 1987 published a book hailing Savarkar’s contribution to the freedom movement.

The Hindi service of BBC Radio, one of the oldest radio stations broadcasting to India, will close in a couple of months. It began broadcasting in 1940 and its last transmission will be on March 31, 2011.

Karnataka governor H.R. Bhardwaj’s move to prosecute state chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa has split the saffron camp from within. The camps of top party leaders, ranging from Mr L.K. Advani to Ms Sushma Swaraj, who were in favour of replacing Mr Yeddyurappa immediately after the Bihar polls, are now pointing fingers at Mr M. Venkaiah Naidu, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi and BJP chief Nitin Gadkari for retaining him. Though the BJP has so far decided to back the CM, the party will wait for Mr Gadkari to return from China on Monday to take stock of the situation.

The Trinamul Congress, the largest ally of the Congress-led UPA, might get another berth, that of minister of state, during the forthcoming Cabinet reshuffle. The reshuffle, long overdue, may be carried out in the last week of this month. The date being considered at this juncture is January 21.