The Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in May next year.

The CPM and the Congress said there should not be any discrimination in the distribution of relief.

The government also sought Rs 5,181 crore for the 244.73 km of embankments, 2,148.22 km of roads, 10,091.17 km of rural roads, and 355 bridges and culverts damaged by the cyclone.

The decision was taken even as the state health department announced 10 more Covid-19 deaths and the highest single-day increase in positive cases, with 396 new cases of infection.

People queued up for hours in areas such as Tollygunge, Kamalgazi, Dunlop, and Ultadanga to get on to government buses, which took only as many passengers as its seating capacity. Many had to return home after failing to get on a government bus.

On Monday, Education Minister Partha Chatterjee had hit out at Dhankhar for disregarding the government’s list of three names, and appointing Professor Goutam Chandra, the head of Burdwan University’s zoology department, Pro-Vice Chancellor.

“In each of the meeting, 1,000 workers and leaders from the grassroots level to the top level will be present. Besides, 1,000 additional people will be present as the audience. Our state leaders will also have the opportunity to speak."

In a meeting on Monday, the council decided to submit a memorandum to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and state Transport Minister Suvendu Adhikary the following day.

The puja committee at Samaj Sebi Sangha said it had put all festival-related work on hold and was awaiting a directive from the state government.

Mamata Banerjee said 75,000 migrant workers had already entered Bengal in trains, and over five lakh had come back in buses and cars.

In Saturday’s statement, Yahya said mosques should not be thrown open till “we get a clarification on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s announcement”. People would not be inconvenienced if these places of religious worship remained shut for a few more days, the association added.

The Chief Minister said the family of each person killed in the storm would receive Rs 2.5 lakh, while people with serious injuries would be paid Rs 50,000 and those with minor injuries Rs 25,000.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed her anxiety over the influx of migrant workers during a press briefing on Thursday. She also upbraided the Railways for sending a large number of Shramik Special trains without consulting the state.

The immediate trigger for the protest was authorities’ negligence towards sanitising their quarters after a sub-inspector tested positive for Covid-19. Later, three more from the same premises were infected with the virus.

According to the Health Department, 12,661 people were still in government quarantine, while 94,722 in home quarantine.

Cyclone Amphan, one of the worst cyclones over the Bay of Bengal, lay centred about 170 km south of West Bengal’s Digha on Wednesday. About 4.5 lakh people have been evacuated from vulnerable areas in West Bengal and Odisha ahead of its landfall.

At least 230 people moved to this shelter as Amphan headed to coastal West Bengal. And most had similar fears and prayers — their houses should remain intact. It has been a double whammy for all of them — the pandemic and the cyclone.

Sources said the meeting is expected to be attended by, besides Banerjee, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, CPI's D Raja, RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray and Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren are learnt to have been invited.

In the last 24 hours, the state government tested 8,712 samples, taking the total samples to 1,02,282 in a month. The state’s positivity rate is 2.89 per cent compared to the national average of 4 per cent.

In a bid to accommodate more people without violating social-distancing rules, a large number of schools have been turned into relief shelters. About 90 relief shelters had been filled with evacuees till Tuesday evening.

While Medinipur MP and BJP state president Dilip Ghosh planned to send a list of migrants to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Congress planned to launch an app for their return.

On Monday, Transport Minister Suvendu Adhikari announced that skeletal bus service and app-based cab service will start operation from Wednesday, connecting the nodal points of Kolkata with the adjoining areas.

The residents of two villages in Malda district’s Harishchandrapur block fought each other late on Sunday night after almost 12 people in one of the villages tested positive.

The helpline had been set up “to provide an institutional channel for the ventilation of issues regarding the non-availability or insufficiency of PPE and other supplies”, said the government, and added that it can be accessed from 8 am to 8 pm every day.