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INSANE: Bengal - The Real Truth

India’s Modi senses chance to dethrone ‘nemesis’ in crucial state election

ON THE GROUND: The PM’s party has descended upon West Bengal in huge numbers for this key election, hoping to grasp the chance to oust the opposition’s only female chief minister. Alisha Rahaman Sarkar reports from Kolkata

The Independent UK

From Rally to Rally Kick: Modi’s Football Play Trends Ahead of Bengal’s Last Phase

A Prime Minister. A football. And timing that made everyone pause. When Narendra Modi was seen casually playing football with youngsters in Gangtok, it felt light, natural even refreshing. No speeches, no politics, just a simple moment. But the internet didn’t see it that way. Because this came right after…

MyLifeXP

Only 1,468 voters restored for Bengal’s final phase rolls. Poll duty staff among the excluded

Majibar Rahman is helping others vote. “But as a first polling officer myself, I am unable to cast my vote,” says Rahman, a history teacher from Krishnanagar who is on poll duty in the Ranaghat assembly for West Bengal’s second phase of assembly elections on Wednesday.

Newslaundry

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Why Krishna and Kali Share the Same Energy

What if two of the most powerful divine forms are actually one? It may sound impossible at first. On one side stands Krishna the embodiment of love, joy, and divine play On the other stands Kali the fierce force of destruction and transformation. They seem completely opposite. But ancient wisdom…

MyLifeXP

‘Encounter specialist’ as Bengal poll guardian: When an observer becomes a ‘viral hero’

In a News18 India segment posted on X today, the thumbnail read: “Singham Ki Entry: Kiski Hogi Victory” (Singham's entry: Whose victory will it be?). On one side sat a cutout of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee; on the other, a stylised, cinematic-style photo of IPS officer Ajay Pal Sharma racking…

Newslaundry

Beyond the fish and puchka: Journalists say SIR is the ‘only issue’ in Bengal elections

In this roundtable hosted by Manisha Pande, the usual media narratives are set aside for the grounded perspectives of journalists who live and breathe West Bengal’s complex political landscape.

Newslaundry

‘Didi is like Mother India’: Tracing the admirers and the economy of a Mamata rally

At a rally in Beleghata, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee (‘Didi’) ramped up her campaign for the second phase of the West Bengal assembly elections.

Newslaundry

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Millions in India stripped of vote before critical state election, as government seeks to ‘purify’ electoral roll

Experts say Muslims and other minorities have been disproportionately deleted from the electoral roll ahead of the West Bengal elections this week

The Guardian - UK

My passport gives me a vote in UK, but not in my own home in Bengal

“Didi, amake ki Bangladesh pathiye debe?” (Sister, will they send me to Bangladesh?)

Newslaundry

Deleted despite documents: Inside West Bengal’s ‘political’ SIR

The run-up to elections in West Bengal has been anything but normal. The Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has led to the exclusion of nearly 90 lakh voters from the electoral rolls. Of these, 27 lakh were excluded after being placed “under adjudication” over “logical discrepancies” in their documents,…

Newslaundry

Fish, funds, and feminism: What Jadavpur University thinks of the Bengal elections

As West Bengal nears the assembly elections, Newslaundry visited Jadavpur University – a historic epicentre of student activism – to look beyond Delhi-centric narratives and capture the raw concerns of young, educated people. While the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists dominates national headlines, the students here offer a…

Newslaundry

Appellate tribunals or a black hole? Where the Bengal SIR goes to bury a ‘second chance’

The Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee National Institute of Water and Sanitation, which houses all 19 appellate tribunals set up by the Election Commission in West Bengal, is completely restricted. CAPF and West Bengal Police guard the gates, and no one is allowed in unless the judges have formally summoned them.

Newslaundry

Bengal’s migrant workers caught between ‘ghuspaithiya’ politics and SIR deletions

Md Anikul Hoque, a migrant labourer from Samserganj in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district, has waited through many crises. He stood in queues for food, water, and cash during demonetisation in 2016. He worked through the Covid-19 lockdown inside sealed buildings in Odisha “like a thief in a prison” waiting to…

Newslaundry

‘Bid to move us to Bangladesh’: At the Bengal poll booths where every second voter is gone

Gajol SK’s name was deleted from West Bengal’s voter rolls. Now he is afraid of what comes next.

Newslaundry

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Newslaundry

Jobs, corruption, SIR | Mahua Moitra on the Mamata mandate

With voting in West Bengal less than two weeks away, questions abound as to whether the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise will hurt the incumbent Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) chances. Concerns are mounting over the reported targeting of Muslim-dominated constituencies where the party has historically been strong. At the…

Newslaundry

‘We are Chitragupta of the Bengal SIR’: Meet the SABAR team tracking deleted voters

Earlier this month, a study by the Kolkata-based SABAR Institute uncovered an alarming disparity in West Bengal’s Nandigram constituency, where Muslims – who comprise 26 percent of the electorate – accounted for 95.5 percent of voter deletions across recent supplementary voter lists published by the Election Commission of India.

Newslaundry

A father, a beneficiary, ex-BLO: The SIR chaos queue in a Bengal district

Aftab Alam gave his primary school examination at Krishnanath School in Titagarh in 1976. He is 64 now. Today, he was back at the same school. It was not for any reunion, but to prove he has the right to vote.

Times Life

5 Revealing Clothes That Were Not Shameful for Women in Ancient India

If your waist shows, it’s “attention-seeking.” If your back is bare, it’s “too bold.” If your body simply looks feminine - curved, alive, unapologetically itself - it becomes something that needs to be controlled before it can be accepted. So you adjust. Not because you’re uncomfortable. But because you’ve been…

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Newslaundry

‘No disease’, only ‘impediment removal’: Delhi meet flags Bengal’s 90 lakh voter deletions

Two days after the Election Commission of India released another list of deleted voters in West Bengal’s controversial special intensive revision, political activist Yogendra Yadav on Wednesday said that deletions would “critically” affect the governing Trinamool Congress in 19-25 constituencies in the upcoming assembly polls. In the 2021 state polls,…

Newslaundry

Amid Bengal voter roll uncertainty, activists flag ‘disproportionate’ exclusions

As West Bengal’s Chief Electoral Office prepared to publish the final supplementary voter list under the Special Intensive Revision, the Association for Protection of Civil Rights, a non-profit working on civil liberties, organised a workshop at the Press Club of India titled “Vanishing Voter Rights and Vulnerable Citizenship: Effects of…

Evening Standard

The ultimate guide to Kolkata

From the coolest cocktail bars to the chicest place to lay your head, Katrina Mirpuri uncovers the best of West Bengal’s largest city

Newslaundry

The Dhaka effect: Did the BNP’s win in Bangladesh blunt the BJP’s poll pitch in Bengal?

A few hundred people from various minority religious groups staged a demonstration in Dhaka on March 13. They alleged no end to atrocities on minorities in Bangladesh, even as a new government was democratically elected after years of turmoil.

The Times of India

Churchill and Austen to be replaced by wildlife on British banknotes

TOI correspondent from London: Winston Churchill, disliked in India for his role in the 1943 Bengal famine, and Jane Austen will no longer feature on British banknotes and instead be replaced by British wildlife.

Times Life

India Was the World’s Richest Country for 1,000 Years. What Exactly Changed?

For much of recorded history, India was one of the largest economic powers in the world. This is not a cultural claim. It is supported by long term economic research. Economic historian Angus Maddison, whose global GDP reconstructions are widely cited in academic circles, estimated that: Around 1 AD, India…

Times Life

How the Mahabharata War Reshaped the Political Map of Bharat

The Mahabharata war, traditionally placed between 1500 BCE and 900 BCE depending on scholarly interpretation, marks a turning point in early Indian civilization. While historians debate its exact dating and scale, the epic and Puranic traditions preserve a memory of large-scale dynastic destruction, territorial shifts, and ecological change. The political…

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