THE National Alliance of Journalists (NAJ) and the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) joins the Editors’ Guild of India in expressing concern at the ‘searches’ /’surveys’, conducted by the IT department on BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai on February 14, as ‘ominous’.They are of the firm opinion, that indeed a new era of undeclared press censorship and curbs on independent journalism is spreading to curb all forms of independent thinking aimed to numb all forms of dissent.

THE new office building of the CPI(M) Andhra Pradesh state committee was inaugurated in Vijayawada on February 13. On the occasion, Party Polit Bureau member M A Baby said the new office would serve as a centre for building mass movements and public agitations and protests. It would be an active platform for democratic and progressive movements.Baby said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was guided by the fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and that the central government was hatching a plot to usurp the powers of states.

THE assembly elections in Karnataka are due this May. The schedule for elections is about to be announced and informally it is known that the elections will be held in the second week of May. Election process would be set in motion in March and the model code of conduct would set in by April beginning.  Karnataka assembly election has attracted national attention, this being the only state in southern India ruled by the BJP.  Karnataka has shown two long term political trends for the last four decades – it has never elected the same party consecutively in assembly elections.

FINANCE Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made a misleading statement the other day that is not expected from a responsible member of the union cabinet. Talking about the resource transfer to the states in the recent budget, she said that the magnitude of transfer had been raised “sharply” (The Hindu February 11). Now, this statement, while creating the impression that the centre has been very “generous’’, gives absolutely no figures on any actual increase in transfer from the centre that would support the claim.

THE All India Coordination Committee of Domestic Workers (AICCDW), in a statement issued on February 11, has called upon the police to take the strictest of action against the employer couple who continuously subjected their young domestic worker to inhuman torture and abuse at their residence in Gurgaon. It also called upon the labour department to investigate and take action against the agency through whom the worker was placed in this household.