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.

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.

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.

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.

A DETAILED analysis of the 16th general elections will have to necessarily wait for the final figures that will be released by the Election Commission shortly and after all major political parties conclude their internal assessments and analysis. The CPI(M)’s Polit Bureau is meeting on May 18 for a preliminary review and its Central Committee will meet on June 7 and 8 by when the respective state committees would have conducted their preliminary reviews. However, it is clear by the time this column is filed that the BJP is marching towards scoring a single party majority in the Lok Sabha.