West Bengal

Haldibari (WB), Jan 14 (PTI) More than 95 per cent work of laying tracks on the Indian side of the Haldibari- Chilahati India-Bangladesh railway link project has been completed, a top Northeast Frontier Railway official said.

The distance between Haldibari railway station in West Bengal's Coochbehar district till the international border is 4.5 kilometres while that from Chilahati in northern Bangladesh till the zero point is around 7.5 kilometres.

Kolkata, Jan 12 (PTI) Two persons were on Sunday arrested here for waiving black flags at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's convoy, police sources confirmed.

One of the two was identified as Sourav Prasad, the president of the West Bengal unit of the Congress Chatra Parishad, they said.

He was held from outside Netaji Indoor Stadium where Modi had come to attend a programme organised by the Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT), police said.

Asansol (WB), Jan 13 (PTI) A BJP office was gutted in West Bengal's Paschim Burdwan district, following which the saffron party activists accused the TMC of being behind the incident.

A party office of the BJP at Salanpur area in Asansol was reduced to ashes in a blaze on Sunday night and an investigation is on to ascertain the cause of the fire, a senior police officer said.

The BJP has put the blame on TMC, which the ruling party in West Bengal has denied, terming the incident a result of a brawl between "goons" of the saffron party.

Kolkata, Jan 11 (PTI) Minutes after holding a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday attended a sit-in demonstration organised by Trinamool Congress students' wing against the CAA and NRC.

The TMC supremo took centre stage among the agitating students who raised slogans against the amended Citizenship Act and the NRC at the Rani Rashmoni Road here, a few metres away from the Raj Bhavan, where she met the PM.

Kolkata, Jan 11 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met on Saturday at Raj Bhawan, amidst ongoing protests across the city against the amended Citizenship Act.

The agenda of the meeting has not been disclosed.

Kolkata, Jan 11 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in the city on Saturday evening on a two-day visit amidst protests against the contentious CAA and "Go back" slogans.

Modi on his arrival was greeted at the NSC Bose International Airport by Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, city Mayor and state Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh and other senior BJP leaders.

Kolkata, Jan 10 (PTI) Retired government officials and civil society groups on Friday took out a rally in the city against the Citizenship Amendment Act, urging the non-BJP states to not implement the contentious legislation.

The march was organised under the banner of Forum for Democracy and Communal Amity (FDCA) and led by former IAS officer Harsh Mander.

The rally started from the Statesman House at Esplanade area, and culminated near the Gandhi statue at Mayo Road.

Kolkata, Jan 9 (PTI) The West Bengal government is testing the viability of white-topped roads, officials said on Thursday.

White-topping is a relatively new technology in which bituminous and asphalt roads are covered with concrete which substantially increases their longevity, a senior state official said.

The state government, in consultation with IIT- Kharagpur, has white-topped one kilometre of the town's bypass road to test cost-effectiveness and feasibility of the technology, he said.

Bengaluru, Jan 7 (PTI) Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Tuesday claimed that the Citizenship Amendment Act violates Constitutional provisions.

"The CAA law that has been passed in my judgment should be turned down by the Supreme Court on the grounds of it being unconstitutional because you cannot have certain types of fundamental human rights linking citizenship with religious differences," he told reporters at the Infosys Science Foundation's Infosys Prize-2019 here.

Kolkata, Jan 8 (PTI) Train services were disrupted in the suburbs and neighbouring districts of the city by supporters of a nationwide general strike called by 10 trade unions on Wednesday, Railway officials said here.

At least 175 local trains were cancelled in the Sealdah and Howrah divisions of Eastern Railway (ER) owing to the blockades put up by supporters of the strike, its spokesman said.