With the West Bengal government declaring the dates for the panchayat election in consultation with the state election commission (SEC), the Opposition have demanded a revision of the date for the third phase of the election. The state government had accepted the proposal of the SEC for holding the elections on July, 2, 6 and 10. But the Oppostion has demanded that the third phase be held on July 9 instead of 10, as the Ramzan month begins from that day and even Rathyatra falls on the same day. Meanwhile, the SEC filed a curative petition before the Calcutta high court claiming that the court’s May 14 order, directing holding of panchayat elections in the state in three phases by July 15, was “not a consent order”.
The state government issued a notification to the SEC on the dates and an all-party meeting was convened by state election commissioner Mira Pandey on Friday. The government notification proposed polls in nine south Bengal districts of North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, East Midnapore, West Midnapore, Bankura, Purulia and Burdwan in the first phase.
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CBI trying to divert attention from rail scam: tmc
Age Correspondent
New Delhi, May 17
Claiming that the CBI is looking into all cases of appointments for senior positions in the Railways since 2009, the Trinamul Congress has alleged that the investigating agency is attempting to divert attention from the cash for promotion scandal involving close relatives of former Union minister Pawan Kumar Bansal.
The TMC nominees had headed the Railways for about three years after 2009. TMC chief Mamata Banerjee and party leaders Dinesh Trivedi and Mukul Roy had been Union railways minister, after which the ministry went to the Congress kitty after a gap of about 17 years.
“Till a few weeks ago, the Congress was boasting of running the Railways on its own for the first time in two decades. But within eight months of the Congress gaining control of this asset-rich ministry, scandals and swindles have begun to pour out. The Congress, which ignores the process of auction and price discovery when it comes to selling public resources, adopts these mechanism, instead, to sell senior government posts,” the TMC stated.
The ruling party in West Bengal, which had walked out of the UPA in 2012, alleged that the “Congress-led UPA government has taken recourse to its trademark vindictiveness”.