THIS time, the people of Haryana have foiled all the tricks of the BJP and voted to punish it in the Lok Sabha elections. In the last Lok Sabha elections, BJP had won all the ten seats in the state with huge margins except one. This time it has barely won five seats.

SPEAKING in a voice thick with genuine emotion, Comrade Mohd Yusuf Tarigami, CPI(M) Central Committee member representing Kulgam for the fourth consecutive term in the J&K assembly,  made a passionate appeal to the government of India to urgently initiate unconditional talks with the Kashmiris if the state was to be saved from going beyond the point of no return.Tarigami was speaking to a packed hall at Jasbir Memorial in Rohtak on September 19 evening on the conditions prevailing in the Valley today and possibilities of retrieving the situation.

FINDINGS of the Prakash Singh Committee, set up by the Haryana government to probe the violent Jat agitation for reservation, continue to generate criticism from various quarters including political parties -- both ruling and opposition. Even the Punjab and Haryana High Court questioned the validity of the committee headed by Singh, a retired police officer. Its report has become a laughing stock. A former Haryana minister has gone to the extent of demanding that a Supreme Court judge look into its findings.

THE Haryana state secretariat of the CPI(M) has taken exception to the manner in which the total negligent role of the BJP government and its political leadership before and during the Jat reservation violence was not held responsible by the Prakash Singh Committee that probed the violence during the stir. Giving reactions on the report submitted on May 31, the Party in a statement issued on June 1 has questioned how the chief minister could escape from his accountability especially he being in charge of the home portfolio as well.

THE agitation which started for reservation for Jats went out of control and took such a violent shape that it caused a large scale destruction in the state. Major parts of the state witnessed a situation, continuously for four days, as if the administration and the government are nonexistent. All the areas became hostage to the trouble creators. The total loss of life and property cannot be assessed properly at this point of time.