The results for the assembly elections held across five Indian states, announced yesterday, threw up some surprises. But a welcome surprise in these elections was the high voter turn out. Voters, and particularly women voters, went to the polls in unexpectedly high numbers. Voter turnout jumped nearly 50 percent in one state, Uttar Pradesh, and women voted at higher rates than men in all five states that had elections. Activists credit...

Several undeserving candidates have allegedly been allotted money in a Murshidabad pocket under a central housing scheme for below-poverty-line people. Many residents of Gangadhari village in Naoda have been enlisted as beneficiaries of the Indira Awaas Yojana even though they already have a house and farmland, depriving homeless people. Villagers owing allegiance to the Congress lodged a complaint with the block development officer of Naoda last month accusing the RSP-run local Madhupur...

The shortage in the number of applicants for seats reserved for less privileged children in private schools appears to be an advantage for the institutions to prevent the proper implementation of the Right to Education Act in the city. The RTE Act makes it mandatory for all private schools to reserve 25 per cent of the seats at the entry class level for underprivileged children and teach them free of cost....

After 4,000 deaths and 19,000 victims over seven years, encephalitis has made it to the election manifestoes of most parties in Uttar Pradesh in 2012. On ground zero in eastern Uttar Pradesh, however, it is still to figure in the candidates’ campaign. Voters are angry and frustrated but say they are not surprised. Some are determined not to vote at all on February 8 and 11, when the seats in these...

-EPW Graft is a major issue in people’s lives, but it is unlikely to figure in voter choice in the assembly elections. A mini-general election will be upon us in February as fivestates go to the polls. Given the high-pitched outpouringson the electronic media around the anti-corruption campaign and the live coverage of the proceedings in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on the Lokpal Bill, we have been led to...