-The Statesman Assembly elections in the States of Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and the Union Territory of Puducherry to be held between 27 March and 29 April come at a time the prestigious US-based Freedom House report has lowered India’s rank from a “free” to a “partially free” country and Sweden’s V-Dem Institute which once described India as the world’s largest democracy as an “electoral autocracy.” The government can either...

-The Telegraph In a fortnight, we will know how many lakhs will be catapulted into a maelstrom of trauma thanks to the NRC What does it take to prove one’s identity (read citizenship) in a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic? Ask nonagenarian Amar Upadhyay, whose daughter, Baijayanti Devi, was the first woman martyr of the Assam Agitation, and who contested the assembly elections. Ask Kargil veteran, Mohammad Sanaullah. Ask Manju Devi, the great-granddaughter...

-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...

-TheWire.in Of the 194 lawmakers, 72 are from the Congress and 41 from the BJP, the Cobrapost investigation found upon analysing over 2,000 affidavits submitted between 2006-16. New Delhi: Investigative website Cobrapost, which had earlier this year exposed some media houses succumbing to the lure of Hindutva advertorials, has now claimed to have discovered that 194 Indian politicians made false submissions regarding their permanent account numbers (PAN) while reporting their income to...

-TheWire.in With the final draft NRC expected soon, there is still no visible mechanism in place for the EC to continuously update its list based on the judgements by tribunals clearing 'D voters'. Guwahati: Shah Alam Bhuyan, an assistant inspector in the Assam police, reminded me of a stark truth about policemen on election duty: “We just help others vote, most of us can’t vote because we are usually on election...