THE Modi-Yogi led ‘double engine’ Uttar Pradesh government, arrested more than 300 farmers at Prerana Sthal on the Noida-Delhi border on December 3. The arrests were made as farmers from Greater Noida, protesting under the banners of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), demanded fair compensation for land acquisitions, updated land valuation rates, and enforcement of the Land Acquisition Act, 2013.Reports indicate that pre-emptive arrests of kisan and trade union leaders began on December 2.

LONG before assuming the role of the Party's general secretary, Comrade Sitaram Yechury's insightful writings in Bengali translation had been the pages of the Marxbadi path, the CPI(M) West Bengal state committee's theoretical quarterly. His insightful writings, translated into Bengali, have frequently graced its pages, starting with "Mao Zedong’s Revolutionary Initiatives" in February 1994.

DEMONSTRATING strong support for the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government's pro-people policies, voters in the Chelakkara Assembly constituency elected U R Pradeep of the CPI(M) by a significant margin of 12,201 votes. The by-election was necessitated after K Radhakrishnan, CPI(M) Central Committee member and former Devaswom Minister, resigned following his election to the Lok Sabha from the Alathur constituency in the last general elections.

THE CPI(M)-MVA candidate Vinod Nikole won a historic victory in the Dahanu (ST) Assembly seat in Palghar district. He secured a record 1,04,702 votes and defeated the BJP candidate by 5,347 votes in a tightly fought contest. This is the tenth time out of the last eleven Assembly elections since 1978 that the CPI(M) has won this seat (Jawhar-ST before delimitation in 2009), and that too by giving five different candidates, all of whom won.

THE Trinamool and BJP are intertwined in their political interests, leading to a stagnant CBI investigation into the RG Kar Hospital brutal rape and murder case. This is not the first time that such a thing has happened. Past corruption cases in Bengal that were put under CBI probe have followed a similar trajectory. On November 21, CPI(M) leaders voiced these concerns during a protest march to the CBI office in Salt Lake.