The West Bengal government on Monday completed a major expansion of its Council of Ministers, with 35 legislators taking oath at a ceremony held at LokBhavan in Kolkata, taking the total strength to 41.

Bringing an end to months of intense high-command negotiations, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah officially resigned from office, clearing the path for state party president and Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar to ascend to the top job. The high-profile transition, formalized ahead of a scheduled June 3, 2026 swearing-in ceremony at Vidhana Soudha, marks the smooth execution of a long-speculated rotational power-sharing agreement engineered by the Congress central leadership following their 2023 electoral triumph. Stepping down after his historic second term, a defiant Siddaramaiah aggressively defended his administration’s marquee welfare “guarantee schemes,” relying on robust GST collections and stellar revenue numbers to thoroughly debunk opposition claims of state insolvency. With the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) swiftly consolidating behind Shivakumar as their unanimous choice, the veteran Vokkaliga strongman faces the immediate structural task of balancing factional cabinet aspirations while maintaining organizational discipline ahead of a highly competitive local poll cycle.

Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee allegedly faced a physical assault by a crowd during a visit to meet post-poll violence victims in Sonarpur. Blaming the BJP for orchestrating the chaos, Banerjee lambasted the lack of security deployment just hours after receiving a fresh investigative summons from the CID.

A defining structural transition reshaped Karnataka’s political landscape on Friday, May 29, 2026, as Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot officially accepted the resignation of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, dissolving the sitting Council of Ministers. The high-profile exit follows a closed-door consensus engineered by the Congress high command in New Delhi, honoring an unwritten, rotational power-sharing formula established during the party’s decisive 2023 electoral victory. While Siddaramaiah will temporarily head state administration as caretaker Chief Minister, his long-time rival and organizational strongman, Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, stands poised as the definitive successor to the state’s apex executive office. Amid highly emotional demonstrations by AHINDA support groups outside the official residence in Bengaluru, both leaders projected a unified front, flying to Delhi to iron out upcoming cabinet expansions. The transition now moves to a formal legislative track, with a critical Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting summoned for Saturday, May 30, to officially elect Shivakumar as the new leader before the scheduled oath-taking ceremony on the steps of Vidhana Soudha.

The organizational fabric of the All India Trinamool Congress suffered a catastrophic post-election collapse on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, as more than 100 municipal councillors resigned across seven major civic bodies in West Bengal. Driven by structural panic after the Suvendu Adhikari-led government announced rigorous audits into civic expenditures, mass resignations crippled crucial industrial belts including Bhatpara, Halisahar, and Kanchrapara. Most notably, a bloc of eight councillors defected from the Diamond Harbour Municipality—the high-profile bastion of TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee—citing local highhandedness. The operational gridlock has pushed the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) into severe turmoil following dramatic visual standoffs where municipal chambers were found padlocked, alongside the issuance of targeted demolition notices to properties linked to Abhishek Banerjee. As Urban Development Minister Agnimitra Paul begins aggressively deploying state-appointed administrators to preempt total municipal paralysis ahead of the monsoons, a beleaguered Mamata Banerjee convened an emergency unity huddle, even as veteran Lok Sabha MP Dr. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar broke ranks to flag deep internal “criminalization” and attend administrative sessions with the newly formed BJP executive.

Science and politics make strange bedfellows. And especially if it comes to creepy and crawly cockroaches, abbhored and swatted, one is unlikely to give it a second glance. But lo and behold, Zoological Survey of India(ZSI) scientists have created first DNA barcode library for Indian cockroaches.