AT long last, more than a month long grueling elections for forming the sixteenth Lok Sabha are over. With eighty two crore registered voters – this was easily the biggest show of the citizens’ democratic exercise of their franchise not only to choose their representatives – but they in turn would choose the new government. After three decades, the people have chosen a government where a single party has got an absolute majority. In that sense this was a decisive verdict.

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.

THROUGH a statement issued from New Delhi on April 28, 2014, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) strongly condemned the attack on Shabnam Hashmi in Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh. She was attacked at about 12.30 p m on April 28  while she with her associates was distributing leaflets brought out by JAVAB (Janvadi Vichar Andolan Bharat) barely 100 metres from the Gadaganj police station in side the Rae Bareli  constituency.

The following is the statement issued by the CPI(M) AP Committee on April 24, 2012:

IT is unfortunate the High Court of Andhra Pradesh gave its judgement to quash the sentences granted to the culprits by the Special Court in the Chundur Dalit Massacre case. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), AP Committee demands the government to appeal the case in the Supreme Court.

HOWEVER we may wish, we cannot do away with some formalities, more so if they present with an opportunity to be in news. Formalities like Jaitley and Amarinder Singh greeting each other, Digvijay Singh and Sushma Swaraj exchanging pleasantries or Modi accompanying Advani to file nomination. Similarly, on every April 14, Ambedkar's birth anniversary, leaders cutting across political divisions rush to pay their tributes.