A number of prominent intellectuals of the country issued the following statement on March 26, criticising the vindictive moves of the Modi government against social activists Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand.
WE are shocked and outraged by the continuing attempt of the highly vindictive Modi government and the Gujarat police to somehow implicate activists Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand, along with three victim-survivors of the state-sponsored Gujarat carnage in 2002 on patently trumped-up charges.
THE CPI(M) Telangana state committee has declared candidates for 3 Lok Sabha seats and 17 assembly constituencies. Md Afroze Samina, former chairperson of Khammam municipality and AIDWA central committee member is the Party’s candidate for Khammam Lok Sabha constituency. Nandyala Narsimha Reddy, CPI(M) Nalgonda district committee secretary is the candidate for Nalgonda Lok Sabha constituency and Cherupally Sitaramulu, CPI(M) state secretariat member and former MLC is the Party candidate for Bhuvanagiri Lok Sabha constituency.
A huge public meeting was organised in Sabhawala village in Vikasnagar area on March 31, in support of the CPI(M) candidate from Tehri constituency, Shiv Prasad Deoli.
WHILE the Maharashtra state committee of the CPI(M) had initially decided to contest three Lok Sabha seats in the state, it later decided to fight a fourth one as well. This is the constituency of Hingoli which is spread over parts of the Vidarbha region (Yavatmal district) and Marathwada region (Nanded and Hingoli districts). Brief introductory notes on the CPI(M) nominees in these four seats follow.
Brinda Karat said that health, education, transport sectors are being privatised and a very large number of poor people are becoming indebted due to expensive treatment in private hospitals. Thousands of posts in government services are lying vacant. She blamed the Hooda government for destroying jobs on the one hand while claiming credit for reservation for a particular community on the other.
ACCUSING the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of going soft on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), G Ramakrishnan, Tamilnadu state secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has questioned why the two parties, during their election campaigns, had been refraining from criticising the BJP and Narendra Modi.
TEA belt in northern Bengal has suffered unbearable pains for the last three years. Tea gardens have been closed without any effort from the state administration to reopen them. Starvation deaths have become regular phenomena in those gardens. Large numbers of tea workers are suffering from acute diseases with health facilities declining. Moreover, the owners are having a field day as the state administration has reversed its position and has now sided with them.
THE streets of Caracas and other cities in Venezuela were flooded with common people who had come out to solemnly observe the first death anniversary of Hugo Chavez on March 5. The small minority opposed to his legacy continued with its violent protests in scattered upper middle class areas of Caracas and a few cities. The presidents of Cuba and Bolivia, Raul Castro and Evo Morales respectively, had flown to Caracas to be personally present on the occasion of the late leader’s first death anniversary.