SINCE the start of July, communal conflagration and tensions mounted in large parts of North 24 Parganas district. The district, along with Howrah, Birbhum and Maldaha, has witnessed communal clashes in recent months. Major areas of disturbances this time are in Basirhat, Bangaon, Barasat sub division. Apparently it started with a derogatory Facebook post attacking Islam and its holy places. The identified culprit is a teenager, but whether he acted on his own or had any RSS links, is not clear.

WITH an eye on the Tripura Assembly election slated for early next year, parochial forces such as IPFT, an open political wing of the outlawed NLFT, have declared a destructive movement of indefinite blockade of the lone national highway and railway in the state from July 10 on the so-called demand of a separate state to be carved out of the existing Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC). The demand is in line with the slogan of an ‘independent state’ mooted by the secessionist NLFT.

BOMBAY University and College Teachers’ Union (BUCTU) completed fifty years. A golden jubilee programme was held on June 17 at the University of Mumbai’s Kalina Campus in the newly constructed Green Technology Building Auditorium. To celebrate the golden jubilee, a seminar was organised on the topic “Towards Formulation of an Alternative Democratic Education Policy”.It was a full day programme. The auditorium was full, with over 500 delegates consisting of national executive committee member of AIFUCTO and delegates from Maharashtra Federation and Retired Teachers’ Association.

THE Shimla Municipal Corporation elections were held on June 16, 2017. The elections were delayed owing to large scale discrepancies in the voters list which led to a new schedule for the revision of electoral rolls. However, the HP High court ordered for an advance date without revision of the rolls with large scale anomalies left in the list. The result was declared on the 17th, in which 17 seats were won by the BJP, 12 by the Congress, 4 independents (Congress rebels - 3 and BJP rebel -1) and 1 CPI(M).

TEA workers in West Bengal went into a historic two day strike on June 12-13, defying repression from state administration. The strike, at the call of the Joint Forum of Trade Unions, was near total in three tea producing districts of Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar and Darjeeling, along with two sub divisions of North Dinajpur and Coochbehar districts.  The strike, with a focused demand of minimum wages in tea industry, came after long and arduous struggle of the workers.