Mamata woos Muslims with OBC card

May 3, 2012

Kolkata, May 3: Desperate to hold back Muslim votes in the forthcoming Panchayat elections, the West Bengal government led by the Trinamool Congress has decided to include 33 more categories in the OBC list.

According to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, will bring 99 per cent of the Muslim community in the OBC net.

“At present there are 65 communities in the OBC category and today the cabinet has taken a decision to include 33 more castes and sub-castes into the list which will bring 98 of the identified 143 castes in the state under OBC category,” Mamata Banerjee told reporters at State Headquarters Writers’ Building on Wednesday.

“This will bring 99 per cent of the Muslim community under this category,” Mamata claimed. Muslims comprise 26 per cent of the electorate of the state.

Terming the decision “historic,” she said: “We have taken the policy decision in the cabinet meeting on Wednesday. In the next Assembly session, we will bring the bill. Once the bill is passed, we will expedite the process so that the listed communities can avail the opportunities at the earliest”.

Slamming the Left Front Government, she said: “Previously the reservation for OBC in the state was 7 per cent but it was lifted to 17 per cent in 2010. The previous Left Front government to take the advantage of this and to provide scope to their party workers made haste and without making any survey included different communities into this category. We did proper survey and after careful consideration added another 33 communities. We will bring the bill in the next assembly.”

Asked about the rest 45 communities which are left outside the category, Mamata who left for Delhi on Wednesday said: “We are considering another seven or eight communities. We will decide this very soon.”

The chief minister justified her decision to provide a monthly honorarium of Rs 2,500 to Imams, a housing scheme and stipends for their children a month back.

“They are not given the honorarium considering their religion, but it is given on the basis of their socio-economic condition,” she said.

“They have a strong contribution in society. They actively participate in the social awareness programme like pulse polio and other campaigns,” she said.

“Our government equally extends our help to Ramkrishna Mission at Belur,” she justified.

Prior to Wednesday’s announcement, on April 9, Banerjee announced more sops for the Muslim community, including new loan schemes, creating an employment bank and promising official stamp on 10,000 madrasas.

The shift of minority votes from the Left Front in favour of the Trinamool Congress is one of the reasons for the electoral reverses suffered by the Left parties in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal as well as in the state Assembly polls which saw the Trinamool Congress score a landslide victory.

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Chaos continues as IndiGo cancels more flights including 73 from Bengaluru airport

News Network

December 4,2025

Domestic carrier IndiGo has cancelled over 180 flights from three major airports — Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru — on Thursday, December 4, as the airline struggles to secure the required crew to operate its flights in the wake of new flight-duty and rest-period norms for pilots.

While the number of cancellations at Mumbai airport stands at 86 (41 arrivals and 45 departures) for the day, at Bengaluru, 73 flights have been cancelled, including 41 arrivals, according to a PTI report that quoted sources.

"IndiGo cancelled over 180 flights on Thursday at three airports-Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru," the source told the news agency.

Besides, it had cancelled as many as 33 flights at Delhi airport for Thursday, the source said, adding, "The number of cancellations is expected to be higher by the end of the day."

The Gurugram-based airline's On-Time Performance (OTP) nosedived to 19.7 per cent at six key airports — Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad — on December 3, as it struggled to get the required crew to operate its services, down from almost half of December 2, when it was 35 per cent.

"IndiGo has been facing acute crew shortage since the implementation of the second phase of the FDTL (Flight Duty Time Limitations) norms, leading to cancellations and huge delays in its operations across the airports," a source had told PTI on Wednesday.

Chaos continued at several major airports for the third day on Thursday because of the cancellations.

A spokesperson for the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) in Bengaluru said that 73 IndiGo flights had been cancelled on Thursday.

At least 150 flights were cancelled and dozens of others delayed on Wednesday, airport sources said, leaving thousands of travellers stranded, according to news agency Reuters.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has said it is investigating IndiGo flight disruptions and has asked the airline to submit the reasons for the current situation, as well as its plans to reduce flight cancellations and delays.

It may be mentioned here that the pilots' body, Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), has alleged that IndiGo, despite getting a two-year preparatory window before the full implementation of new flight duty and rest period norms for cockpit crew, "inexplicably" adopted a "hiring freeze".

The FIP said it has urged the safety regulator, the DGCA, not to approve airlines' seasonal flight schedules unless they have adequate staff to operate their services "safely and reliably" in accordance with the New Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) norms.

In a letter to the DGCA late on Wednesday, the FIP urged the DGCA to consider re-evaluating and reallocating slots to other airlines, which have the capacity to operate them without disruption during the peak holiday and fog season if IndiGo continues to "fail in delivering on its commitments to passengers due to its own avoidable staffing shortages."

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