-The Business Standard Defying the Election Committee's suggestion last week, the state announced a two-phase election to be held in April The tug-of-war between the West Bengal government and State Election Commission over Panchayat poll schedule may head for a legal battle, with both sides showing no sign of compromise. After a three-hour long meeting at its office here, the state election commission today refused to accept government-announced panchayat poll dates and sent...

-The Indian Express Kolkata: West Bengal's notification for the panchayat elections marks a flash point in an ongoing tussle between the Mamata Banerjee government and the state election commission. The government notification, issued last week independently of the election authorities, has declared polls in two phases, on April 26 and 30. The election commission, headed by Meera Pandey, has been insisting on three phases. On Monday, the commission wrote to the government...

-The Business Standard For some people, travelling by train to their village 1,400 km away is a journey through hell. These are people who travel unreserved. Their suffering is all the more traumatic for being symbolic of the apathy of those who run the trains and the country. Saraswati Mondal, an illiterate domestic worker in Delhi, going to Murshidabad by Kalka Mail goes to New Delhi station, walks into a crowd of...

-The Economic Times KOLKATA: The holy Ganga is a poison river today. It's so full of killer pollutants that those living along its banks in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal are more prone to cancer than anywhere else in the country, says a recent study.  Conducted by the National Cancer Registry Programme (NCRP) under the Indian Council of Medical Research, the national study throws up shocking findings. The river is thick with...

-The Hindu Children form main part of workforce in Murshidabad Dolly Khatun was about five-year-old when she first handled bidis, helping her mother with odd jobs like fetching and carrying the ingredients from the village vendor and returning the finished bundles, cutting the kendu leaves into strips and counting the rolled bidis into a bunch. Within a couple of years, she was fully trained and over the past 10 years she has...