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The polling to the third phase of the state assembly elections in Assam and Bengal will be taking place on April 6.On the same day, the polling to the t two other states Kerala and Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry will be completed- thereby completing the polling in three states and one union territory. After that only Bengal will be going for polling in another five phases till April 29.

New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh shooter Chinki Yadav, quota winner in the 25m pistol event and gold medalist in the Delhi World Cup last month, failed to find a place in the team and was replaced by Anjum Moudgil, in the 15-member shooting squad named by the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) for the Tokyo Olympics here on Sunday.

The finance minister Nirmala Seetharaman hastily withdrew the directive of her ministry applying heavy reduction in interest rates for small savings. She termed it to be inadvertent mistake due to an oversight. She did not admit and also did not deny the proposal under the consideration of her department for more than a year. It now appears that the disclosure of issue due to notification was ill-timed. Her party was desperately seeking to end the ten year rule of the chief minister Mamta Bannerji in Bengal and also battling fiercely to retain its control over Assam for another term when the embarrassing revelation came.

The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, might have thought his Bangladesh visit at the time of elections in Bengal would instil Matua community in the state. But he is mistaken. Not only the Muslims but even Hindus have come to distrust his observation as well as the rhetoric of is second in command Amit Shah about weeding out the illegal infiltrator, the termites, and help the persecuted Hindus.

With the completion of two phases of elections covering 86 assembly seats in Assam, the attention is on the 40 seats, mostly in lower Assam, which will go for polls on the last phase on April 6. Although much before the polls, BJP led NDA was believed to be easily winning the elections, the decision of Congress and AIUDF to form a grand alliance against NDA has made the battle more interesting. A section of political analysts is of the opinion that the Grand Alliance with arithmetic on its side is ahead of the BJP led NDA.

At the invitation of Prime Seikh Hasina, Minister Narendra Modi visited Bangladesh from 26 to 27 to participate in the 50th –anniversary celebrations of Independence of Bangladesh to attend the beginning of the year-long celebration in March 2020 which had to be deferred due to the Covid pandemic. This was also birth centenary of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. In the preceeding days, Prime Ministers and Presidents of Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Srilanka came to Dacca to convey their good wishes to Bangladesh. Congratulatory messages were received from many, including Joe Biden, Vladimar Putin, Boris Johnson and Imran Khan. Curiously, Chinese President Xi Jinping did not figure.

The surge in COVID-19 infections and the resulting deaths in India is frightening enough to make the people apprehensive about fresh lockdowns. Stringent measures and local lockdowns are already being used in many infected areas in several states, and the centre has already given directions for lockdowns in larger areas if required. Maharashtra, the worst affected state during the present wave, has declared that ‘lockdown is an option’ and Punjab has said that the state would use this option if situation does not improve within a week. Since the centre has declared ‘India at risk’ going from ‘bad to worse’ the prospect of ‘lockdown’ seems to be real, which is frightening the people more than the wave of infection itself.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: This week witnessed a slew of setbacks for the Leader Of the Opposition, Ramesh Chennithala (LOP) in particular and the Congress-led United Democratic Front(UDF) in general in Kearala on the eve of the assembly polling on April 6.

India’s much-touted role as the ‘pharmacy of the world’ is under threat, thanks to a build-up of negative publicity, partly deliberate and partly spontaneous, on the perceived stoppage of the export of covid vaccines to other countries.

There is a pattern the way the Centre has forced itself thick into State poll battles in 2021 (South and East) with the Modi Government' and BJP’s determined objectives of not merely wresting West Bengal from Mamata Banerjee's TMC and retaining Assam, but also becoming a decisive player in reshaping politics and policies in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.