-Down to Earth Its primary aim is to woo voters in Bihar where elections will take place later this year While the whole country is fighting against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the priority of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is to manage Rajya Sabha elections and campaign for the Bihar state assembly elections. The launch of ‘Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan’ by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 20, 2020, is nothing but...

-Scroll.in Emotion and grand political statements may normally distract and attract voters. In a crisis, they are poor substitutes for governance. It is now 41 days since the government told the Supreme Court that there were no migrant workers on the road any more. “They have been taken to the nearest available shelter”, and 2.3 million were being fed, India’s Solicitor General told the judges, who – in a now familiar routine...

-The Indian Express The impact of the lockdown may make social issues more prominent again in terms of class, at the expense of caste as well as religious identities and communal tendencies. When interviewed by journalists, several migrant workers badly affected by the COVID-19-related lockdown admitted that they had voted for the BJP in 2019. Indeed, the party attracted poor voters in large numbers during the last Lok Sabha elections, especially among...

-The Hindu The exclusion of migrants from the electoral process reveals the caste- and class-driven nature of mainstream politics While political commentators have been busy analysing voter preferences in the general election 2019, one segment, namely migrants, continues to be overlooked. The Election Commission of India (EC), on February 21, clarified that NRI voters cannot cast votes online, and that an NRI who holds an Indian passport can vote in his/her hometown after...

-The Indian Express In the two-cornered contest in Rajasthan, voters, irrespective of whether their allegiance rests with the BJP or Congress, are critical of the decline in jobs. Ajmer, Jaipur, Rajsamand, Udaipur (Rajasthan): For about half an hour, starting 8 am, buses halt at Udaipur’s Syphon labour chowki to offload passengers huddled on their roofs. Hundreds of daily wage workers commute to the 10-odd labour chowkis in Udaipur city, from villages...