-Down to Earth Despite the rural hinterland being in the throes of agrarian distress, the incumbent coalition has won handsomely in these very areas The incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has beaten all odds to win the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Prominent among these odds was the agrarian crisis that rural India is currently in the throes of. Since 2014, the country has suffered two major droughts and 850-odd...

-Frontline.in An RTI-based public interest petition in the Bombay High Court points out that 20 lakh EVMs that the manufacturers affirm to have delivered are “missing” from the possession of the Election Commission. Issues relating to the “vulnerability” and “unreliability” of electronic voting machines (EVMs) have come up regularly in the context of the 2019 general election. Complaints filed by opposition parties on specific instances of malfunctioning of EVMs as well as...

-TheWire.in Amongst all the criticism, the Centre has been tight-lipped about employment data post demonetisation. The issue of ‘unemployment’ is being widely discussed across India. The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data for 2017–2018 says that the unemployment rate hit 6.1%, the highest in 45 years. Even the opposition has intensified its criticism of the present government, which had promised to create 2 crore jobs each year. In a recent interview, in response...

-The Hindu The promise made in BJP manifesto contradicts govt. affidavit in the SC New Delhi: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s election promise to implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC) across the country, if voted back to power for a second term, contradicts the Centre’s stand in the Supreme Court and Parliament. Responding to a petition calling for implementing the NRC in Tripura, the Centre had filed an affidavit in the...

-The Indian Express To fulfil the constitutional requirement, reservation must be based on a rigorous identification of economic backwardness. The introduction of the 124th constitutional amendment that provides the possibility of quotas for the “economically weaker sections” (EWS) has rekindled the debate on reservations. These quotas diverge from reservation policies for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other socially and educationally backward classes, by jettisoning caste or community identity as the...