-The Indian Express BJP is attempting to use citizenship issue to woo Namasudra community in Bengal. It is generally believed that unlike other states of India, caste and religion don’t play a significant role in West Bengal’s electoral politics. Academic literature often articulates this as West Bengal’s “exceptionalism”. As a result of the electoral decline of the Left Front and some limited attempts by the Trinamool Congress at community-based mobilisation, the...
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MNREGA job spike to take some load off Congress in Rajasthan -Shalini Nair
-The Indian Express At Rs 199 a day, the Central government-notified MGNREGA wage rate for Rajasthan is Rs 26 less than the state’s minimum wage. Banswara, Bhilwara, Jaipur, Udaipur (Rajasthan): For four years, Pista Sargara (55), a long-standing job card holder under the MGNREGA, approached her panchayat office in Bhilwara Lok Sabha constituency desperate for any work under the scheme. She was turned away each time. The turnaround came in January...
More »Cash for votes -- Tamil Nadu's best kept open secret -T Ramakrishnan
-The Hindu No party admits to offering bribes to voters, even though it is common knowledge that they all do. In the just-concluded elections to 38 Lok Sabha constituencies and 18 Assembly seats in Tamil Nadu, cash seizures alone added up to around ?215 crore, almost 10 times the haul during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. While some activists blame the ‘freebie culture’ in the State, others call for an overhaul...
More »Ironic lack of women candidates in northeastern states -Sudipta Bhattacharjee
-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...
More »At Rs 670 crore, BSP has biggest bank balance among parties -Pradeep Thakur
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has the biggest bank balance among all parties, according to official records. The expenditure report submitted by BSP to the Election Commission on February 25 states that it has Rs 669 crore deposited in eight accounts in branches of public sector banks in the national capital region. The party, which scored a blank in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, has also...
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