May 25: At least 20 people were killed and nearly two lakh left homeless in the south Bengal districts as winds flattened houses and rivers burst their banks.
South 24-Parganas was the worst hit, recording 13 deaths. Army and BSF personnel have managed to shift some 80,000 people to safer places there but many are still trapped.
Ananya Dutta
KOLKATA: Twenty-three persons were killed when a severe cyclonic storm accompanied by heavy rain brought by Cyclone Aila lashed the city and some districts of West Bengal on Monday. The death toll could be higher: reports from the districts were only coming in. Many people were injured.
Kolkata: The Left Front Government, already facing criticism for land acquisition, on Thursday rejected a proposal to acquire 120 acres at Kharagpur for setting up a city centre. In the first Cabinet meeting of his government post-election, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee withdrew the proposal.
KOLKATA: The Left Front government in West Bengal is likely to be more circumspect in acquiring land for industries and infrastructure development projects, in the light of the Lok Sabha election debacle.
Denied rights, aggrieved citizens abstain from voting having lost their means to earn a living, communities are increasingly using their vote to drive home the message they distrust the State. Tribals who lost their agricultural land in a forest area because of faulty implementation of forest rights laws in Maharashtra are as peeved as fishers in the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh border
TAMLUK, April 1: Rain, thunder squalls and hailstorms lashed Midnapore East district on Tuesday afternoon, causing extensive damage to standing crops. The weather prompted the district administration to rush officials to the affected areas to assess loss.
There were no reports of any casualties from the affected blocks.
The proposed petroleum, chemical and petrochemicals investment regions (PCPIR) project at Nayachar, in the estuarine belt of East Midnapore, may result in an alteration in the course of the south-west monsoon resulting in climatic hazards in faraway places of the country.
