The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is facilitating the visits of representatives from several developing countries to witness India's amazing election exercise under South-South cooperation. Representatives from Lesotho, Nigeria, Malaysia and Namibia are already in India and have visited polling booths and electoral offices in various states of India including West Bengal and Karnataka. For inquiries or interviews, please contact Ms. Nandita Surendran-UNDP, phone no. +919810084776, Email: nandita.surendran@undp.org. Journalists and media...

-The Hindustan Times   Kokrajhar (Assam): Nearly two years after deadly ethnic riots led to more than 100 deaths and displaced over 4.5 lakh people in Kokrajhar region of Assam, fear and tension prevails. Communities - especially, the Bodos and Bengali-speaking immigrant Muslims - living in close proximity across the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District appear to be completely polarised. In the small village of Joyma a few kilometres from Gosaigaon, around 150 Bengali-speaking...

-Down to Earth   Tribal voters refused to allow polling officers to put ink mark on their finger nail, fearing reprisal by Maoists In the dense forests of Saranda in Jharkhand, residents say two things rarely touch the ground-one, sunlight and, two, government development schemes. The forest had been a hotbed of Maoist activities and a large number of panchayats in Manoharpur block around the dense forest never voted in the past...

-The Hindustan Times   Sakhri Nate: In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the 5,000-odd voters of Sakhri Nate, a Muslim village, took their day off from fishing activities, sacrificing a day's earning, to vote for Congress candidate Nilesh Rane. Five years later, the story is different. They have dared Congress leader Narayan Rane and his son Nilesh to enter their village. On Thursday, the Ranes cancelled their scheduled meeting here when they learnt that...

-The Hindustan Times     It is tough to hold elections in the Maoist-hit areas, also known as the Red Corridor, which include parts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.   In these areas, holding free and fair elections is just one part of the challenge; the bigger challenge lies in getting ballot boxes, polling officials and security men safely out of the Maoist strongholds once the...