1. Mamata Advises HDK On Post-Poll Strategy
Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday urged Karnataka leader HD Kumaraswamy of JD(S) to keep up the pressure on the BJP and advised him to approach President Ram Nath Kovind if Governor Vajubhai Vala ignored his pleas.
The West Bengal chief minister had earlier spoken to Kumaraswamy’s father and former PM HD Deve Gowda on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, she spoke to Kumaraswamy for over 15 minutes. Incidentally, after the conversation, newly elected JD(S) legislators announced a sit-in before Raj Bhavan in Bengaluru.
Banerjee, while stepping out of the state secretariat in Nabanna, refused to comment on the Karnataka situation. The CM said she would not speak on the matter for the day as she was busy with state-related issues.
(Source: The Times Of India)
2. Anger Boils Over After Poll Officer’s Mutilated Body Found On Railway Tracks
Three-year-old Prithwish could not understand why so many people were pouring in at their house and still not paying any attention to him. Everyone was speaking in hushed voices; his mother was lying on the bed since Tuesday evening; and Srija, his elder sister who can always be relied on to tease and play with him, seemed to have lost her verve.
And the one person who never ever ignored him was nowhere in sight. “When will Papa come?” he asked this correspondent, in desperation.
Prithwish’s “Papa”, Rajkumar Roy, 42, will never come back home, at least in the way the little boy knew him. On Tuesday evening, his mutilated body was found on the railway tracks at Sonadangi, in Raiganj. The teacher at Karandighi Rahatpur High Madrasha had been a presiding officer, and he performed his duty at the Itahar Sonapur Primary School booth till 4pm on Monday. After that, other polling personnel neither saw him nor knew where he was. In his absence, all paperwork was managed by another presiding officer, from a neighbouring booth.
(Source: The Times Of India)
3. Karnan Launches Political Party
Nearly five months after release from prison, Justice (retd) CS Karnan announced the launch of his political party here on Wednesday.
Karnan said he would seek registration of ‘Anti-Corruption Dynamic Party’ soon. The party plans to field women in all 543 Lok Sabha constituencies in 2019.
“The party has been launched with me as founder president. Only women will contest, and we hope to sweep elections across the country. I was asked to be the only male candidate and contest from Varanasi. However, I feel even Varanasi should be contested by a woman. The decision to field women was taken as we feel they have been discriminated against severely. I have no plan to associate with the judiciary any longer,” he said after addressing a convention on discrimination against Dalits and minorities and illegal detention of social activists.
(Source: The Times Of India)
4. Violence Shifts To North, South Bengal Peaceful
The epicentre of violence shifted from south to north Bengal during Wednesday’s re-polling in 573 booths, leaving behind scary images of goons armed with muskets carrying away a ballot box in Malda’s Ratua. The ballot box was recovered by cops a little later, after which polling resumed in the booth. Worse still was the recovery of the mutilated body of a 42-year-old presiding officer on the railway tracks at Sonadangi in North Dinajpur late on Tuesday night. TOI had reported the recovery of the body in its Wednesday’s edition.
Presiding officer Rajkumar Roy, a school teacher, had gone missing from the ItaharSonapur Primary School polling booth during the 14 May polls. His mysterious death sparked impromptu protests in Itahar on Wednesday, with hundreds of irate poll officials blocking National Highway 34 alleging murder and demanding security. When SDO TN Sherpa reached the spot to diffuse tension, he was greeted with hurled shoes and heckled.
(Source: The Times Of India)
5. Govt Schools Assured Of More Teachers
The Bengal government has promised the heads of all state-run schools to start at the earliest recruitment of teachers for the institutions where lack of enough staff has crippled their English-medium units.
Officials of the school education department met the heads or officiating heads of all 39 government-run schools across Bengal on Wednesday to discuss ways to improve the standard of the schools.
The heads of multiple schools said they had been facing problems running the English-medium units because of an acute shortage of teachers, one of the headmasters who attended the meeting said.
"The heads were told that the school education department would soon write to the West Bengal Public Service Commission to immediately start the process of recruiting teachers for government-run schools," an official of the department said.
(Source: The Telegraph)
6. Therapist Held For Pushing Child
A speech therapist assigned to a toddler who has difficulty speaking was arrested for allegedly pushing the child while trying to make him sit, causing him to hit his head on the corner of a table.
The boy, aged two years and four months, suffered a cut as a result of the alleged push, according to his father.
The therapist, who was arrested on Tuesday and remanded in judicial custody, has since lodged a counter complaint against the boy's father, accusing him of slapping her after he saw his son bleeding from the cut and crying.
Police said the alleged incident occurred on Monday evening when the child was in a institute on Prince Bakhtiar Shah Road for his second session of speech therapy.
The boy's parents had been asked to wait outside the classroom and the door was closed behind them. The couple, who are residents of the Shakespeare Sarani neighbourhood, were seated there for around 10 minutes before they saw the receptionist enter the room with an antiseptic solution and cotton.
(Source: The Telegraph)
7. Storm-Hit Tree Crashes On Car In Salt Lake
A roadside tree that had been leaning since being struck by a squall on April 18 crashed on a sedan in Salt Lake's AA Block during a thunderstorm on Wednesday morning.
Residents of the block said their repeated pleas to the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation's environment department to prune the tree's branches and put more soil at the base to stabilise it had fallen on deaf ears.
More than 100 trees had fallen in Calcutta and Salt Lake during the 18 April squall, which clocked 98 kmph.
(Source: The Telegraph)
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