Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhttacharjee on Friday rued his mistake of “allowing” the agitation staged by Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee outside the Tata Motors’ factory at Singur which brought the business to a standstill for at least 26 days, and ultimately led to the exit of Tatas from Singur.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee once again asserted that West Bengal cannot progress without industrialisation.

Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar on Friday said that the current logjam in Parliament can be resolved only through the joint efforts of the government and the Opposition. She was speaking at an interactive session jointly organised by the Bharat Chamber of Commerce, the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce, the Indian Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce in Kolkata.

A major fire broke out early on Friday at Presidency University destroying computers, documents and research material. The fire originated in the chemistry department at the third flood on Derozio Building in the wee hours of Friday. The university was closed for Puja holidays which will continue till Diwali. Eleven fire tenders brought the blaze under control after over three hours. A fire department official said there was no fire safety measure in the university.

In an apparent reply to Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi’s “two Bengals” barb against the CPI(M), party politburo member Sitaram Yechury on Tuesday said there were two Indias. “One is the Shining India of the rich and the powerful and the other India is that of the poor whose daily income is ’20,” he added.

Only months after Rouvanjit Rawla, a Class 8 student of La Martiniere for Boys, committed suicide allegedly following corporal punishment, yet another student of a city school tried to end his life by consuming sleeping pills allegedly after being reprimanded by his Hindi teacher. An FIR was lodged by the student’s father at the Kalighat police station and the teacher was arrested on Tuesday on the basis of the suicide note found in the boy’s school notebook.

Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will upgrade its four maternity homes in the city. According to MMIC health Atin Ghosh, these homes lack basic infrastructure like surgical instruments and a properly-run operation theatre. They also do not have adequate staff. He alleged that the previous Left Front board did not do anything to improve the condition of these maternity homes.