ON January 29, 2014, 26 year old Yuma Sherpa, died in the aftermath of a surgical procedure to harvest eggs from her body, as part of the egg donation programme of a private clinic based in Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi.
Yuma was persuaded by agents to donate her eggs for a surrogacy, and started undergoing the procedure early this year. Subsequently, she wanted to stop the procedure and back out altogether as she was suffering from discomfort caused by the injections, but was told by the doctor at the clinic that it was too late to go back.
RELIANCE and the near doubling of the gas price led to Kejriwal's short-lived government filing an FIR against Moily, the petroleum minister and Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries Limited. The scam in gas pricing is of course not a Kejriwal or AAP discovery; Left MP's – Tapan Sen and Gurudas Dasgupta and earlier, late Dipankar Mukherjee – have exposed the successive scams in gas pricing that have helped Reliance to loot the people.
ON the eve of the declaration of the schedule for general elections in 2014, P Chidambaram, finance minister in the outgoing UPA government, chose to meet the chief executives of India’s public sector banks. The cynical would argue that this must be a last attempt to get the banks to dole out some more sops before the election date. If that were to impress a section of the electorate at all, it is a clever strategy.
DEMOCRATIC youth of Tripura gave vent to their anger against the deprivation of Tripura of a railway division. Recently the chairman of the Railway Board announced that three new railway divisions will be opened at Jammu (J&K), Gulbarga (Karnataka) and Silchar (Assam). Of these, while Karnataka and Assam are ruled by the Congress party, the Congress is a partner in the ruling coalition in Jammu & Kashmir. This step of the Congress led UPA government is no doubt aimed at reaping political benefit in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections.
IT was an advanced ‘April Fool’ for the readers of newspapers in Bengal on 01st March. The two principal newspapers of ABP group Anandabazar Patrika and The Telegraph published 22 advertisements of West Bengal government on that very day!
ON February 28, the Ludhiana district committee of the CPI(M) organised a Satyagraha and Jail Bharo agitation in Ludhiana city on its 15 point charter of demands. The action took place in response to the call of the CPI(M) Central Committee. Before the agitators courted arrest, they organised a big rally at Chattar Singh Park. More than 1,000 satyagrahis then marched towards the deputy commissioner’s office. They offered themselves for arrest but it was the police that retreated.
WHILE Ashok Mochi handed over a water bottle to Kutbuddin Ansari, the latter smilingly accepted it and gave a red rose to Mochi. And then the audience gave them a standing ovation the moment when these two persons, belonging to a state which was ripped apart by genocide 12 years back, shared the same stage in Thalipparamba on March 3, 2014, to express their mutual trust and love. This was a noble occasion, characterised by a meeting of Kutbuddin Ansari and Ashok Mochi, two faces of the communal pogrom in Gujarat in the year 2002.
TRIPURA Left Front, on March 5, has announced the names of the candidates for the two parliamentary constituencies. LF convener Khagen Das announced that the LF in its meeting on March 5, has unanimously decided on the names of the LF supported CPI(M) candidates for Tripura West (general) and Tripura East (ST) seats. From Tripura West (general) seat LF candidate will be CPI(M) state committee member since 2012 and CITU state general secretary Sankar Prasad Dutta.