DYFI Tripura state committee and TYF central committee jointly organised massive protest against the brutal attack on Sayandip Mitra, president of DYFI West Bengal state committee and Tapas Sinha, former general secretary of DYFI central committee and CPI(M) candidate from Kanthi Lok Sabha constituency as part of the pre-poll violence of the TMC.
LEFT Front Chairman Biman Basu, in a statement issued on May 16, admitted that this result was not expected. He said, the state administration and police have worked for the ruling party. The ruling party unleashed terror, and the corporate media too unleashed a campaign. Despite that the people and the Left Front activists have courageously fought in the elections.
IN a modest performance in the Lok Sabha elections, Left Democratic Front has doubled its tally in Kerala. The front bagged eight seats while retaining the existing four seats and wresting four seats from UDF. UDF’s tally is 12. The CPI (M) has won 7 seats including two independents while the CPI got one.
THIS year has witnessed a dramatic spurt in terrorist related violence in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous state. The radical Al Qaeda affiliated Islamist group, Boko Haram, has claimed responsibility for a series of massacres and bombings that have rocked the city of Maiduguri and other towns in northern Nigeria since the beginning of the year. The group once again attacked the capital Abuja in the second week of April. The terror attack at a busy bust station in a working class suburb of the capital killed at least 75 people.
THE system of engaging contract workers has witnessed a change from bad to worse. In the early days, employers used to employ contract workers mainly in peripheral and low-skill work in their enterprises, though many of these works were of a permanent and continual nature, while operational jobs were generally manned by regular workers.
NITIN Aage, a dalit youth studying in Class X of Kharda village in Jamkhed tehsil of Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra, was brutally murdered in broad daylight on April 28. (See People’s Democracy, May 05-11 issue.) His crime (really!?) was that he had fallen in love with a girl of a so-called high caste. He was mercilessly beaten up, his hands and legs were broken with a hammer, and then he was strangulated to death. After this heinous act, moreover, the culprits hung the dead body from a tree and tried to give the impression that Nitin had committed suicide.
AS the Lok Sabha election campaign has drawn to a close, it is time to reflect on the implications of the aggressive campaigning by various parties, and especially by the corporate media and big business backed BJP, for the society and polity of the country.
NEWSPAPERS on Tuesday May 13 carried three reports. The first was that the Sensex had closed at an all time high of 23551 the previous day; it had also recorded a historic intra-day high of 23572.88. The other stock market indices had also shown similar remarkable buoyancy the previous day, carrying forward a rally that had begun a few days earlier.
CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat termed the results of the Lok Sabha elections from West Bengal as “distorted”. Addressing the press in New Delhi on May 16, he said that there was widespread rigging and violence during the last three phases of the elections in the state and the entire democratic process was vitiated. “The results do not reflect the strength and support of the people for the Left Front in West Bengal”. He said that the Left Front has won from the seats where the polls were held in a more or less free and fair manner in the first two phases.