Former Kolkata Mayor and once a Trinamool Congress heavyweight, Sovan Chatterjee formally returned to TMC on Monday (November 3, 2025) after a 7-year break. Once a close aide of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, he had also joined the opposition Bharatiya Janta Party for a brief period, but termed it a “Himalayan mistake” after leaving.
In a political converging point that happens rarely, both the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) have received the recent Supreme Court order on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) with open arms, terming it as a “victory of the rural poor” and a “reminder of the government’s responsibility to its people.
The 2025 edition of the Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF), starting November 6, will open with the eternal Uttam Kumar–Suchitra Sen romantic classic Saptapadi (1961), minister Aroop Biswas announced at a press conference on Tuesday at Rabindra Sadan. Marking 50 glorious years of Sholay, director Ramesh Sippy will be in Kolkata to deliver this year’s Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture, one of KIFF’s most-awaited and prestigious sessions.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday announced the second phase of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, a process meant to verify and update voter lists by adding new voters and deleting ineligible ones.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing “surprise and shock” at the Centre’s unilateral appointment of an interlocutor for the “issues relating to Gurkhas in Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars regions of West Bengal”.
After flocking in droves to a meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Union home minister Amit Shah and making a beeline for the podium, it seems the good times are over for these BJP leaders of West Bengal. No longer can they afford to be conspicuous by their absence at the house of a slain party activist or a vandalised saffron camp unit, post a directive from BJP’s central observer for West Bengal, Bhupendra Yadav.
In a recent development, Akhtar Ali, the former deputy superintendent of the state-run RG Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata and a key whistleblower in the financial irregularities case at the medical institute in the state, tendered his resignation on Monday.
The recent observation by West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose *”I can’t say Bengal is safe for women”* has raised a storm of concern and debate across the state. His statement, made in reply to journalists, has thrown open new debates on women’s safety, governance, and ground reality for women across rural and urban Bengal.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has sought compensations and further financial support at the Centre to reconstruct flood-affected North Bengal on charges that both Bhutan and the Centre have failed to address the crisis that has killed at least 32 people and displaced thousands of others.
The government debt of West Bengal is expected to outgrow 8 lakh crore by the financial year 2025-26, and it is a considerable increase in the fiscal burden of the state that has already raised eyebrows among economic analysts and political critics.
