-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 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...

-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 Economic Times A campaign called 'Bridge the Care Gap' has been lobbying political parties to commit to the implementation of the Mental Healthcare Act and the National Mental Health Policy On April 2, Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, and other senior Congress leaders unveiled the party's manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections. The Congress website crashed with a huge spike in traffic. Most analyses of the manifesto focused on the usual themes...

-The Indian Express Congress manifesto should have promised better implementation of MGNREGA instead of another scheme In its previous ruling stint in New Delhi, the Congress’s flagship social welfare programme was MGNREGA, which provides 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. For its next shot at power, the grand old party is promising to implement a...