-Frontline.in A large proportion of voters who are left out of the electoral rolls despite having valid voter ID cards are Muslims and Dalits. Abdul Rahmat, 28, from Kolkata was shocked and confused when his application for enrolment in the electoral rolls was rejected with the comment “not an Indian citizen”. Born in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, he had moved to the city a decade ago and held a white-collar job with...

-The Indian Express Whichever party comes to power at the Centre, India is making a policy shift to direct income support. The festival of democracy started with the first phase of polling on April 11. Ideally, it should be celebrated like Holi, forgetting past enmity and embracing each other with love. But, unfortunately, it is being fought like the battle of Kurukshetra in the epic, Mahabharata. All the weapons of politics...

-The Telegraph As one Manipuri woman put it, 'Everybody talks of women’s empowerment, yet they have not fielded any woman candidate' ‘My vote matters’. This is how the Election Commission is exhorting the electorate “in our ageless democracy,” in a poster depicting two tribal women from Sikkim. “The lines on my face do not matter, the ink on my finger does,” it says. The irony is that the participation of women candidates, especially...

-The Hindu Raipur: Selling his paddy crop was a pleasantly different experience this year for Yogesh Nareti, a farmer with 17 acres of land in Makadi village in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district, which goes to the polls this week. “During the BJP reign, selling the produce at Large-sized Agricultural Multipurpose Cooperative Societies (LAMPS) was tedious. The entire process used to take two months,” he recalls. “Now, besides offering a lucrative MSP [minimum support...

-The Times of India CHANDIGARH: Drug abuse was a big issue in the 2014 parliamentary elections in Punjab and had dented the SAD-BJP alliance’s performance. In the run-up to the 2017 assembly elections, Congress claimed it would break the supply line of drugs within a month of coming to power. But despite efforts of enforcement agencies, the state’s drug problem continues unabated. This can be seen from the seizures made by different...