THE farce enacted in the name of municipal elections in Tripura has led to the BJP “winning” 329 of the 334 seats in the 20 urban local bodies, including the Agartala municipal corporation. Of these, 112 seats were won unopposed by which seven local bodies were captured without a contest. For the 13 other urban bodies, including the Agartala corporation, elections were held on November 25. What was witnessed was large-scale booth capturing, attacks on polling...
THE MGNREGS was introduced by the UPA-I government despite opposition from the neo-liberal lobby within it, owing inter alia to the active intervention of the Left which was supporting that government from outside. It was restrictive from the beginning: it promised a maximum of only 100 days of employment in a year, and that too for just one member of a rural household. But within those restrictions it conferred an economic right: employment could not be refused and if it...
OMICRON, a new SARS-CoV-2 strain, first detected in the Gauteng province of South Africa, has been acknowledged by WHO as a “variant of concern”. Already, cases have been reported from other countries, making clear that Omicron is unlikely to be contained geographically. If it outperforms Delta in creating new infections, it may then replace Delta as the dominant variant in Covid-19 infections, as Delta has done to the earlier...
THE CPI(M) does not accept the verdict of the recent civic polls in Tripura as the elections to the 20 urban local bodies were conducted "fraudulently", hence the results of the polls were "not fair", former chief minister and the Party’s Polit Bureau member, Manik Sarkar said on Tuesday, November 30th. Sarkar said that the ruling BJP along with the civil administration at various places turned the November...
THE 23rd state conference of Punjab state committee of CPI(M) was held at Ludhiana from November 24-25, 2021. Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) general secretary along with Nilotpal Basu, Polit Bureau member and in-charge of Punjab state committee remained present on both days to guide the conference on behalf of the Central Committee. Gurchetan Singh Bassi unfurled the Party Flag. Sitaram Yechury led the delegates to pay tributes to...
THE first physical central executive committee (CEC) meeting of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) after the Covid pandemic struck in March 2020, was held on November 20-21, 2021 at the Harkishan Singh Surjeet Bhawan in New Delhi. It was also the first physical CEC meeting after the AIDWA all India conference at Mumbai in December 2019. Members from 21 states...
THE Kerala state committee of the Democratic Youth Federation of India has conducted a campaign named “Food Street” from November 24 exposing the Sangh Parivar’s hate propaganda against Halal hotels. The Halal hate campaign is intended to create anti-Muslim feelings in society. RSS has started the hate campaign in social media with leaders like K Surendran, president of Kerala Bharatiya Janata Party, in the lead....
EVEN as oil prices in the international market have picked up again after plunging initially following reports of the United States and other countries, including India, planning to release crude stockpiles in a coordinated effort to lower global energy prices, domestic price rise has raised anger against union government policies in Kerala.
CENTRAL government issued an order on September 24, 2021, to dissolve the ordnance factory board(OFB) with effect from October 1, 2021. Accordingly, the OFB with its inter-dependent and inter-connected network of 41 ordnance factories would be converted into seven separate companies registered under the Companies Act and would be duly listed in the Stock Market.
DEMOCRATIC action across Latin America in the month of November delivered a series of rebukes against the political desire emanating from the United States government. In two significant presidential elections in Central America (Nicaragua and Honduras), the parties of the right-wing – favoured by Washington, DC – suffered defeat at the hands of the Left. Then, in regional and local elections in Venezuela, the ruling United Socialist Party (...
