THE election notification for 119 constituencies of Telangana Assembly was issued on November 12. After a long tussle, the ‘Mahakutami’, a four party alliance of Congress, Telugu Desam Party, Telangana Jana Samithi and CPI, announced its first list of 65 candidates from the Congress party on November 12. The TDP, TJS, and CPI are to contest in 14, 8, and 3 seats respectively.

“THE countdown of BJP has begun. It has failed to solve the problems of the common man, hence as the elections come nearer, the BJP starts chanting the temple issue. They do not even have the patience to wait for the Supreme Court decision.” This was stated by Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the CPI(M) addressing the ‘meet the press’ programme at Raipur Press Club in Chattisgarh.He said in the last four and half years of the BJP rule, the policies of neoliberalism have been aggressively pursued, which has led to severe economic attacks on the common people.

SRI LANKA has been plunged into a political and constitutional crisis due to the arbitrary steps taken by Maithripala Sirisena in the past three weeks. The president dismissed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and swore in his erstwhile opponent Mahinda Rajapaksa as the prime minister on October 26.It may be recalled that Sirisena, who belongs to the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), had broken away from Rajapaksa. He had fought the elections and defeated Rajapaksa in January 2015 in alliance with Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP).

ALONG with the revival of the issues of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, the BJP-RSS combine has opened a new front with communal intent. That is the renaming of cities and places which have a Muslim cultural lineage. The BJP government in Uttar Pradesh led by Adityanath, has gone on a name changing spree.  Allahabad, one of the foremost educational and cultural centres of Uttar Pradesh has been renamed officially as Prayagraj.