West Bengal Assembly polls | Mamata’s purported audio clip seeking help from former partyman stirs row
The Hindu
According to BJP, the Chief Minister got in touch with Pralay Pal, who has sworn allegiance to Adhikaris, to help her win Nandigram.
A huge controversy erupted on Sunday amid the polling for 30 Assembly seats in West Bengal, with the BJP releasing an audio clip where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is purportedly heard cajoling a BJP leader from Nandigram to rejoin the Trinamool Congress and help her win the seat. Ms. Banerjee is pitted against her former protege and now the BJP candidate Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram, the spring board that propelled her to power in 2011, dislodging the Left Front from power after a 34-year unbroken rule. A BJP delegation, led by party general secretary and Bengal minder Kailash Vijayvargiya, met the State's Chief Electoral Officer and handed over the tape, claiming Ms. Banerjee was using her official position to influence the outcome of the bitterly contested Assembly poll.
The municipal bus stand auditorium in Malappuram was packed. But nobody quite knew what to expect. After all, a new event was making its debut at the State School Arts Festival. The moment V.G. Harikrishnan started his rendition of Pyar bhare do sharmile nain..., everyone was convinced that Ghazal was here to stay. The student from GVHSS, Atholi (Kozhikode), was applauded loudly for his rendering of the timeless ghazal sung originally by Mehdi Hassan.

For the last few weeks, several wards in Madurai city have been getting piped drinking water through a new drinking water scheme. The sweetness of the generously supplied water has led to loss of business to several suppliers of canned drinking water in the city. But, not many know that the water supplied to the houses in Madurai is directly drawn from Lower Dam of Mullaperiyar Dam in Idukki district of Kerala.











