In what seems like keeping the doors open for Trinamul Congress supremo and chief minister Mamata Banerjee to form a coalition with them for the 2014 Lok Sabha election, BJP president Rajnath Singh said: “We must give her government a full term before judging her work. It would be unfair to comment on the functioning of the government.” He also voiced in favour of Ms Banerjee’s demand for special financial package for the state.

With panchayat polls in the state round the corner, West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra on Monday tabled a state Budget focused on rural and agricultural growth. The budget, which did not have much to trigger growth of large industries in the state, however, promised to fuel social sector growth.

Lauding Amit Mitra’s Budget, chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said it was an exercise of creating a garden in a desert. “This Budget is like an exercise at growing trees in a desert or better still creating a vast expanse of greenery in a desert,” she added.

The Opposition parties described the Mamata Banerjee government’s first full-fledged Budget as “aimless” and “meaningless” while state finance minister Amit Mitra stayed away from the media, contrary to the tradition in the Assembly.

A minor girl was allegedly gangraped in south Kolkata. The incident took place at around 3 am when the victim and her friend had gone to take bath in a local pond in Panchshayar area of Purba Jadavpur on the occasion of Maha Shivaratri.

The stalemate between the Mamata Banerjee government and the state election commission (EC) on panchayat elections continued as the latter remained adamant on its stand for a three-phase poll. In the letter sent to the Writers’ Buildings, the state election commission has also suggested the dates for the three-phase polls: April 28, May 2 and May 6.

Governor M.K. Narayanan has asked the state higher education department to give a report on the suspension of the three teachers of Milli Al Ameen College. The governor has also sought a report from the state home department on account of the action taken by the police on the basis of the complaint filed by the teachers.

The Calcutta high court on Thursday left the state government deeply embarrassed by expressing its dissatisfaction with the CID investigation into the death of a person Kazi Nasiruddin in police custody in Dhaniakhali in Hooghly district. The division bench of Chief Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Joymallya Bagchi lambasted the administration, police and the CID, pointing out that they were trying to mislead the investigation.

Unable to bear the loss, a 20-year-old girl Srirupa Chakraborty jumped to her death on Thursday morning from the sixth floor of a private hospital minutes after her father died there of cancer.

Senior Trinamul Congress MP Saugata Roy had to quit as adviser to Mamata Banerjee government’s industry department because he had publicly articulated an unpalatable truth: land was the main hurdle in the path of state’s industrialisation.