The Week in Parliament

THE Lok Sabha took up discussion on the prevailing flood and drought situations in various parts of the country. CPI(M) leader P Karunakaran began the discussion by paying homage to the innocent people who have lost their lives due to flood and heavy rainfall throughout the country, and said flooding has affected Kerala, Maharashtra, Assam and some parts of Tamil Nadu. Intense rainfall has caused a significant damage to life and property. Out of 1033 villages, 965 villages have been affected in the hilly areas of Idukki in Kerala. About 119 people have lost their lives.

RS Sharma’s Aadhaar Challenge: Claiming Victory from Defeat

BY a sleight of hand, RS Sharma, the TRAI chief, has changed his irresponsible challenge “harm me using my Aadhaar” to “hack my Aadhaar database”. The two are completely different issues. What the ethical hacker community – yes, there is one – has shown is the immense harm that they could have done to Sharma, but did not. They only showed us the danger from Aadhaar to our privacy, and they succeeded quite convincingly.Sharma claims that whatever the hackers did, it did not involve hacking of the Aadhaar database; and that his emails were not hacked.

On Modi’s Claims about Development

NARENDRA Modi, the prime minister of India while speaking at the public meetings in Uttar Pradesh boasted about the ‘enhanced pace of completion of developmental projects’ by him and his government. He remarked that the previous governments were responsible for stalled projects in the country, particularly in UP. According to him, a list of incomplete projects was prepared and the target was set (though four years of the government have already passed) for their completion.But is it really true?

Homage to M Karunanidhi

CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on August 8THE Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) expresses its profound grief at the death of a veteran of the Dravidian movement, DMK President and a stalwart of Tamil Nadu politics, M Karunanidhi. He was chief minister of Tamil Nadu five times. He was elected to the Tamil Nadu assembly thirteen times without losing a single one.Karunanidhi was a man of many parts. He was an able administrator, writer, a skilled orator and upholder of rational and secular values.

Support Transport Workers’ Strike

CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on August 5THE Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) extends its support to the one day national strike call on August 7, against the retrograde provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act Amendment Bill and the continuous rise in the prices of petroleum products.The demands raised by the All India Co-ordination Committee of Road Transport Workers Organisations are genuine and the government must favourably consider their proposals.Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) calls upon the central government to accept

CPI(M) Condemns Assassination Attempt on Nicolas Maduro

CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on August 5THE Communist Party of India (Marxist) condemns the assassination attempt on the president of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. Drones containing explosives were detonated close to the presidential platform when he was addressing a military parade to mark the 81st anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard.According to reports, the perpetrators of the attack are linked to the ultra-right wing forces through whom the US is carrying out its attempts to destabilise Venezuela.

Polit Bureau Communique

CPI(M) Polit Bureau meeting was held on August 3-4, 2018 at New Delhi. It has issued the following statement on August 4.SUPPORT TO KISAN-MAZDOOR AGITATIONSTHE Polit Bureau reiterated the CPI(M)’s support to the kisan-mazdoor jail bharo on August 9, 2018.

Numbers Hold Mirrors

WHEN questioned about Maratha reservations, Nitin Gadkari, cabinet minister in the present union government and also former president of the BJP, posed a counter question: “Where are the jobs”? Before posing this question, he actually started it by saying: “But there are no jobs. Because in banks, the jobs have shrunk because of IT. The government recruitment is frozen”. If the same words come out of our mouth’s, all of us would have been by now branded as ‘anti-nationals’ and what not. As the saying goes, the truth has come out of the ‘horse’s mouth’.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The Victory of Alexandria Cortez

APART from whatever is happening with Trump and his ‘eccentricities’, many other significant developments are taking place within the US. One such significant development is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in the New York Democratic primary election. Recognising its significance, the New York Times Sunday Review featured a cover story, ‘The Millennial Socialists Are Coming’, about her and other candidates of her like.Not long ago, Trump has tweeted that a Red wave will sweep the country in the upcoming mid-term elections to Congress and Senate in the US.

Meanwhile in Tripura

MERE SUSPICION IS ENOUGH IN the changed Tripura, if one is a government employee and has attained the age of 50 or 55 years or completed 30 years of service, then the threat of voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) looms large on such category of government employees. The continuation of the services will depend upon periodical reviews of one’s fitness, service records etc. If the review finds the employee unfit, he/she would be shown the door.

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