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LUCKNOW: Bahujan Samaj Party national president Mayawati is under tremendous pressure to retain 10 Lok Sabha seats won in 2019 and also to help BJP. In the beginning the manner in which Mayawati fielded candidates and announced her nephew Akash Anand to be national coordinator and her successor to launch the campaign it appeared that she was serious to regain the lost ground in Uttar Pradesh.

Across the globe, people observe Labour Day on May 1 to commemorate the protests in 1886 at Haymarket Square, Chicago and express solidarity with workers. But not many people know that much before this incident, the world’s first organised labour and trade union movement had taken place in the streets in Srinagar— the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir.

The crucial third phase of Lok Sabha election is most likely to bring more seats in the BJP’s bag compared to the first and second phase of elections, but it is not bringing any cheer on PM Narendra Modi’s face. Conversely, the struggle of the BJP in retaining its seat, and there is every likelihood of losing many of them, has made PM Narendra Modi ever more concerned, since it enhances the challenge of making up the losses in the first three phases in the last four phases of election much more difficult.

Even as once sworn political opponents Congress and the CPI(M) close ranks in West Bengal as a part of INDIA alliance against BJP, the coalition partners are likely to go separate ways after the election is over. The parting of ways post election has been trend of the two ideologically divergent outfits while their coming together before the Lok Sabha polls has been owing to both political compulsions and the amicable personal relations between the men heading the respective state units.

BHOPAL: Two former Chief Ministers and one Union Minister are among the candidates who will seek people's mandate on May 7 in Madhya Pradesh. They are Digvijay Singh who is contesting from Rajgarh, which is his home constituency and the other former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, who is contesting from Vidisha. Jyotiraditya Scindia, who is among the candidates from Guna is contesting as BJP candidate. In 2019 he was nominated by the Congress and lost.

Contemporary politics and the idea of India have undergone enormous changes. The tenets of probity, transparency and morality have lost values and relevance. What is happening in West Bengal in the midst of the Lok Sabha elections is a good indicator of that decline. First, West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose has instructed the Raj Bhawan staff not to respond to the police enquiry in the matter of molestation of the lady staff. Secondly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been systematically arousing communal passion and playing the victim Hindu woman card. Bose has asked Raj Bhawan staff to “ignore any communication from [state/city] police” and barred them from issuing statements in any form.

May Day began to be commemorated in India 101 years ago. The first programme, organised in the city of Madras on May 1, 1923 is credited to M. Singaravelu Chettiar, who was a towering nationalist figure, and an early communist associated with the anti-caste movement.

Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi raises the shrillness of his attack on Rahul Gandhi, aligning with a new phase of BJP’s identity politics, he is doing the Gandhi scion a great favour. Modi, on his part, seems to have settled the issue of the prime ministerial face of the opposition INDIA bloc in favour of Rahul.

Narendra Modi expressing joy and taking jibe at Rahul Gandhi’s candidature from Rae Bareli shows that the man is blinded by political arrogance and overconfidence. His remark “Daro mat, bhago mat”, implying that Rahul left the Amethi seat out of fear, is simply empty electoral rhetoric wrapped in perception of joyous misreading of the moment.

BJP is finding itself in a very tough electoral battle in the third phase of Lok Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh for which election campaign will end on May 5. It is surprising that despite high pitch communal campaign by BJP leadership, including the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, common people are just brushing them aside as merely election rhetoric. They don’t believe PM Modi’s accusation that Congress and INDIA block would give reservation quota’s of Dalits, STs, and OBCs and wealth of the Hindu’s to Muslim, if they would come to power. People are taking it like a pinch of salt.