Jindal Steel and Power (JSP) has been honoured with FICCI CSR Special Commendation Award for its efforts to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kabul [Afghanistan], July 1 (ANI): Multiple explosions and gunfire were heard near the Loya Jirga hall in the Afghanistan capital Kabul where religious scholars and tribal leaders gathered for the Taliban's grand assembly.

Kabul [Afghanistan], April 23 (ANI): A Taliban commander, Qari Nusratullah who had been torturing people in various provinces of Afghanistan for several months has been killed in a targeted operation of the anti-Taliban group, National Liberation Front, local media reported.

Agartala Mar 18 PTI The ruling BJP in Tripura and the opposition CPIM on Friday announced names of candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha election to the states lone seat in the Upper House of Parliament While the saffron party nominated its state president Dr Manik Saha as the contestant the Left Front fielded senior CPIM leader and former Tripura finance minister Bhanu Lal Saha as the candidate Bhanu Lal Saha aged 75 is now a party MLA from Bishalgarh seat in Sepahijala district CPIM state secretary Jitendra Chowdhury said the party nominated him considering his contribution to the democratic movement The Central leadership today cleared the name of Dr Manik Saha who is the partys state president as Rajya Sabha nominee said BJP chief spokesperson Subrata Chakraborty Mainak Saha who quit the Congress and joined the BJP in 2016 was made the partys state president in 2020 He had replaced Biplab Kumar Deb who had led the saffron party to a phenomenal victory in the 2018 Assembly elections ending a 25-year-old Communist rule The Rajya Sabha poll will be held on March 31 and votes will be counted on the same day The tenure of incumbent Rajya Sabha MP from Tripura Jharna Das Baidya will expire on April 2 The last date for filing nominations for the upcoming election is March 21 while scrutiny of papers will take place the next day The last date for withdrawal of nominations is March 24 according to a notification issued by the Election Commission of India MLAs in the 60-member Tripura assembly will participate in the Rajya Sabha elections as members of the Upper House of Parliament are elected by legislators in state assemblies It is an election through proportional representation The Left Front currently has 15 MLAs in the Tripura assembly while the ruling BJP has a strength of 33 and its ally IPFT has eight BJP legislators Sudip Roy Barman and Asish Saha resigned from the assembly and gave up the membership of the party in February They later joined the CongressTripura Speaker Ratan Chakraborty in January disqualified BJP MLA Ashish Das who has joined the Trinamool Congress while CPIM legislator Ramendra Chandra Debnath died recently PTI PS BDC NN NN

Agartala Mar 18 PTI The CPIM on Friday nominated former Tripura finance minister Bhanu Lal Saha as the Left Front candidate for the upcoming Rajya Sabha election to the states lone seat in the Upper House of Parliament Saha aged 75 is now a party MLA from Bishalgarh seat in Sepahijala district The Rajya Sabha poll will be held on March 31 and votes will be counted on the same day CPIM state secretary Jitendra Chowdhury said the party nominated Saha considering his contribution to the democratic movement The tenure of incumbent Rajya Sabha MP from Tripura Jharna Das Baidya will expire on April 2 The last date for filing nominations for the upcoming election is March 21 while scrutiny of papers will take place the next day The last date for withdrawal of nominations is March 24 according to a notification issued by the Election Commission of India MLAs in the 60-member Tripura assembly will participate in the Rajya Sabha elections as members of the Upper House of Parliament are elected by legislators in state assemblies It is an election through proportional representation The Left Front currently has 15 MLAs in the Tripura assembly while the ruling BJP has a strength of 33 and its ally IPFT has eight BJP legislators Sudip Roy Barman and Asish Saha resigned from the assembly and gave up the membership of the party in February They later joined the Congress Tripura Speaker Ratan Chakraborty in January disqualified BJP MLA Ashish Das who has joined the Trinamool Congress while CPIM legislator Ramendra Chandra Debnath died recently PTI PS BDC BDC

Kolkata Feb 25 PTI The father of student leader Anis Khan whose mysterious death has triggered protests across West Bengal on Friday said he could not spot the man who had come to his house in police uniform on the night the student leader was allegedly killed at the test idenitication TI parade conducted during the day as per the order of Calcutta High Court Salim Khan a septugenarian went to the correctional home at Uluberia where the arrested two in the case - a home guard and a civic volunteer - were kept and subjected to the identification process TI parade is the drill in which the victim or his family are made to identify the accused in a crime Khan who had approached the HC for an enquiry by an independent agency and not by the special investigating team appointed by the government was accompanied by his lawyer The court had on Thursday allowed the SIT probe under strict monitoring After the TI parade he told waiting reporters I could not spot the person from the two presented before me The man in police uniform police who had come to my house on that fateful night of February 18 was not there Voicing displeasure he said I am not happy with the SIT investigation I want court monitored CBI probe On his return Khan met a delegation of Left Front leaders at his residence and iterated his demand CPI-M state secretary Suryakanta Mishra senior party leader Rabin Deb and Left Front Chairman Biman Bose were among those who met the bereaved father They went to the second floor of Khans house from where Anis a former SFI leader and a prominent anti-CAA protestor was allegedly thrown out His family had alleged that Anis had been thrown out from there by four policemen from Amta police station who had forced themselves into his house in the midnight of February 18 There is an unfinished structure with windows having no grill in the second floor They claimed that his body was seen lying outside the house and rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced brought dead The local police station was informed but policemen arrived the next day The Left leaders did not talk to the waiting reporters present at the house CPI-M Rajya Sabha MP Bikash Bhattacharya had said that the incident was a brutal one and that Anis had been killed in cold blood The high level probe into the incident should not be influenced by the state police he had said after the incident PTI SUS KK KK KK

Agartala (Tripura) [India], February 9 (ANI): The Tripura government on Tuesday launched a special immunization drive for expectant mothers and children to cover the left out population that did not receive the essential COVID-19 vaccine doses.

Agartala (Tripura) [India], December 25 (ANI): Former Tripura Chief Minister and Leader of the Opposition Manik Sarkar on Friday launched a scathing attack on TIPRA motha, the ruling party of tribal district council areas. Sarkar felt that any attempt to create a divide among people is obviously is a part of the politics of both parties.

Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], December 21 (ANI): After the Trinamool Congress (TMC) won the Kolkata Municipal Corporation polls, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state chief Sukanta Majumdar said on Tuesday that the party does not consider these polls as an election.

Kolkata Dec 18 PTI The KMC poll on Sunday has set the stage for a battle between the ruling TMC seeking to hold its ground amid rumblings within it over the dropping several sitting councillors and the opposition BJP for which the challenge is to snatch the second position in the city civic body from the CPIM-led Left Front BJP also faces the task of keeping its flock together after facing an exodus following the drubbing in the assembly poll For the saffron party smarting after the defeat in the assembly election in which it emerged a distant second the challenge will be to keep aside the internal differences and retain its ground among the urban electorate The internal differences within BJP have been out in the open for the past few months The civic poll delayed due to the pandemic will be an opportunity for the Trinamool Congress to effect a much needed image makeover after the 2018 panchayat election considering that it is trying to expand nationally The rural poll that year was marked by widespread violence and the makeover will depend on its ensuring a peaceful KMC election The TMC leadership has to this end issued a warning to its candidates against any violence and has threatened to expel those found involved in it or not allowing free and fair polls TMC had stormed back to power in West Bengal for the third consecutive term and swept all the 16 assembly segments in the city in the April-May assembly poll It has been in power in the city civic body since 2010 and is expected to dominate the KMC election this time too riding the momentum of its massive victory in the state poll and the recent UNESCO Intangible Heritage tag for Kolkatas Durga Puja The election in all the 144 wards of KMC will be held on December 19 and the counting of votes will take place on December 21 Buoyed by its performance in the assembly election the party has decided to go for an image makeover and has dropped 39 non performing sitting councillors Some of them are fighting as independents or have become inactive in the poll campaign In the assembly poll BJPs vote share in the KMC area was 29 per cent while in the state it was 38 per cent In the previous edition of the KMC poll which was held in 2015 TMC had won 124 wards the Left Front 13 BJP five and Congress two The ruling party which has come out with a 10-point vision document for the civic polls is hopeful of bagging more than 135 seats this time The development that the TMC board in the civic body has brought about since 2010 and the state government since 2011 is enough to ensure our victory in the KMC poll After our success in the assembly poll under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee the partys victory in the KMC polls is a foregone conclusion former Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim also a state minister said Unlike in the 2015 KMC poll campaign when TMC had gone to battle projecting the then mayor Sovan Chatterjee as its mayoral candidate the TMC has not announced the candidate this time Although Hakim declined to comment on it party sources said the TMC leadership this time decided against announcing any mayoral candidate as it did not want a communal campaign to take shape Had we projected Hakim as our candidate then we would have seen BJP going to town over the Muslim mayor issue We didnt want that to happen so we decided not to project anyone a senior TMC leader said Hakim a trusted aide of party supremo Mamata Banerjee had taken over as the mayor of Kolkata in December 2018 after Chatterjee resigned from the post and other ministerial positions due to personal reasons In the 145-year-old history of Kolkata Municipal Corporation nationalists like Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Bidhan Chandra Roy also a former chief minister had graced the mayors chair in pre-Independent India Hakim was the first Muslim mayor of the city post-Independence The civic body was created during the British era in 1876 by bringing in the Calcutta Municipal Consolidation Act 1876 The BJP whose KMC election campaign lacked vigour is hopeful that the party will come out with astounding results if free and fair election is held We wanted that the KMC poll be held in the presence of central forces But now as the polls will be held under the state police we are apprehensive about how elections will be held If its free and fair we are hopeful of coming out with astounding results BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar said Incidentally both TMC and BJP have a common adversary - the independents The independents are contestants who have been denied tickets by their respective parties and are contesting on their own both in north and south Kolkata The Congress and Left Front which failed to open their account in the state assembly for the first time since Independence and have been pushed to the margins of West Bengal politics this time decided to contest the polls seperately Faced with an existential crisis the CPIM has this time fielded young candidates from its Red Volunteers brigade -- a group of Left activists in their twenties who earned accolades for their humanitarian services during the lockdown The Left Front is pinning its hopes on the young group to recover lost ground among the urban electorate in Sundays city civic poll The Red Volunteers have wide acceptance among the masses The vote share that they managed to secure in the last assembly poll was far higher than our average vote share So this time during the KMC poll it was a conscious decision to field more young candidates a senior CPIM leader said He said CPIM aims to defeat both TMC and the BJP but at the same time conceded that retaining the number two position in the civic election would be its main challenge The Congress on the other hand is hopeful of good results The BJP Left Front and the Congress have focussed on alleged illegal constructions in the city water logging and worsening law and order as the main planks in their manifestos for the KMC election The ruling Trinamool Congress on its part have promised to improve facilities which it asserted were put in place during its tenure in the last two terms During her brief poll campaign Banerjee had stressed on providing better and corruption free civic services The TMC supremo also said that the UNESCO heritage tag for the citys Durga Puja was due to the efforts of the government and will be enough to sweep the polls According to political analyst Suman Bhattacharya the challenge before TMC is to ensure violence free elections whereas for BJP it is a fight to prove its existence in south Bengal I will not be surprised if the Left secures a higher vote share or number of seats than the BJP in the KMC election he said PTI PNT KK KK KK