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Alapan Bandyopadhay is in the eye of the storm raging between the Centre and the State of West Bengal. The gentleman bureaucrat has been hogging national headlines after the Modi-led Union government ordered his transfer on the night of May 28 following the PMO charge that the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee kept Prime Minister Narendra Modi waiting, skipping the review meeting on Cyclone Yaas-induced damage in Bengal. Banerjee refuted the charges and alleged that the Centre and the BJP were resorting to vendetta against her government because of their humiliating defeat in the latest assembly elections.

The Allahabad High Court had said that the state of affairs regarding treatment and management of Covid cases in Uttar Pradesh could only be considered ‘Ram Bharose’. The government quickly moved the Supreme Court against the observation. The apex court obliged, asking high courts to desist from issuing impractical orders. Well, the court only made a technical difference, not to the essence of whatever was meant by the high court judges. The objection was only about the issue of orders. The Supreme Court said the observations only need to be taken as ‘advise’ and not as order.

New Delhi: Sanjeet saved the day for India winning a Gold as his experienced compatriots Amit Panghal and Shiva Thapa failed to retain and regain their titles at the 2021 ASBC Asian Championships in Dubai.

We Americans are used to the never-ending and increasingly costly cycle of U.S. electoral campaigns. Theoretically, elections are supposed to happen once every two to six years depending on the office and, one would think, campaigns for those elections would coincide with the election schedule. The reality is quite different. The 2020 election is barely past, and already the media and political commentators are hyping 2022 and 2024.

American investors splurge investment in India in 2020, despite COVID 19 battered the economy. India’s GDP recorded big decline in 2020 but US investment in India surged by over 297 per cent in 2020 (up from US $ 3.6 billion in 2019 to US $ 14.3 billion in 2020). In contrast, US investment in China plateaued, despite the positive growth in the Chinese economy. In 2020, GDP in China grew by 2.3 per cent.

The United States, says the tribe of anti-vaxers, is past the “incentives phase” of the “vaccination escalation hierarchy’. The incentives phase follows the “voluntary phase” and precedes the “punishment phase”. India remains stuck in the “voluntary phase”, where vaccination is pushed by legacy media, Social Media influencers, doctors, and the government itself. The “incentives phase” rewards vaccination – lottery tickets, free beer, free doughnuts, free ice cream.

After coming back to power for the third consecutive time, chief minister Mamata Banerjee has once again reignited an old debate in the state. The debate is about the efficiency of a bicameral house in a state. Back in 2011, when Mamata first came to power, she wanted to create a Legislative Council but the idea was put into cold storage. This time, however, the cabinet has given the nod to go ahead with the plan.

The confrontation between the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the West Bengal Chief Minister has now reached a critical level posing questions about the very future of our federal system guaranteed by the Indian constitution. The letter by the centre sent on Monday evening to Alapan Bandyopadhayay was a show cause charging him for violating section 51 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005 by not attending the review meeting on Yaas called by the PM on May 28. Alapan resigned on May 31 as the Chief Secretary of the Bengal government –his due day of retirement, without reporting to the office in Delhi as directed by the centre in its letter of Friday evening.

If West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee does not leave any opportunity to settle political scores with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, nor does the Centre (BJP) with Banerjee. Last week, to show her annoyance, she opted out of the meeting to review the cyclone havoc in the state. In a rare violation of the protocol, Banerjee also kept the PM waiting for 30 minutes, met him briefly, and left even while the deliberations and damage assessment was on. The BJP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and some central ministers like Rajnath Singh criticized Mamata for playing petty politics.

New Delhi: Amit Panghal failed to defend his title as while Shiv Thapa lost his bid to regain the gold as the two Indians suffered identical 2-3 defeats in hard fought finals at the 2021 ASBC Asian Boxing Championships in Dubai on Monday.