THE last session of the parliament before the forthcoming 15th general elections to the country has begun as we go to press. The manner in which this session has been conceived and structured, created apprehensions at the outset about the government's intentions to use this session more as a launch pad for its election campaign, rather than to transact business to implement important, long-standing, pending legislations, particularly those aimed at providing relief to the already beleaguered vast mass of the people.

ON January 21, the Dehradun district unit of the Students Federation of India (SFI) took out a procession in the city, the capital town of Uttarakhand, in protest against the brutal murder of Comrade Saifuddin Mollah of the SFI in West Bengal, and burnt an effigy of the Bengal chief minister Ms Mamata Banerjee in the DBS College grounds. It was the Trinamool goons who attacked Comrade Mollah with sticks and clubs and thus murdered him.

FROM January 20 to 24, the Lal Jhanda Punjab Bhatha Mazdoor Union staged a five-day dharna in front of the district commissioner’s office at Ludhiana. The action received support not only from the CITU but from many other unions, like those of the MGNREGA workers, mid-day meal workers, Reta workers, Bharat Nirman workers and others, who took part in this protest programme of the brick kiln workers.

THAT was November 1977. One of the worst natural disasters – a typhoon and a tidal wave swept across the coastal Andhra Pradesh and in Krishna district alone more than 10,000 people lost their lives. Even before the government could wake up and organise relief measures, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), led by Comrade P Sundarayya personally visited the affected areas and organised relief efforts. As a part of the relief that was mobilised, a team from West Bengal visited the areas and distributed essential materials and also organised medical camps.

THE crippled Kerala government, that has been trying to balance on a razor’s edge, is doing everything to woo the voters with an incessant declaration of eyewash schemes. Tat present, all the farmers, especially in the hilly regions of the state, are vigorously agitating against the government’s timid attempt to implement the controversial Kasthurirangan committee report on Western Ghats.