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There may be a reason why Mamata Banerjee turned down Chandrababu Naidu’s request to be present at a meeting of opposition leaders to be hosted by the Congress in Delhi just before the declaration of results.

Indian billionaires are galore and growing. But, where are new local big time industrial investors? In fact, there are hardly any. The last five years have seen more industrial sickness than ever before for a same period. Banks have lost advances worth billions of crores to industry as stricken assets. Many companies have been referred to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board (IBBI) by creditors for resolution. However, few genuine local bidders are coming to their rescue. In a way, banks themselves are responsible for the situation. Dishonest bankers deliberately overlooked inflated project cost estimates by promoters before clearing their loan applications. This helped promoters happily siphon of surplus loan funds to create private wealth. Higher project cost means higher product cost. Thus, many projects turned sick even before taking off. Now, scores of large heavily borrowed sick public companies are under the IBBI hammer. Defaulted promoters are barred from bidding for their bankrupt companies though, quite surprisingly, some of them have offered to substantially clear their debts. One wonders if these defaulters have the necessary resources, why did they wait this long to be pushed to bankruptcy proceedings by their large creditors?

Tomorrow and May 19 and then this long cycle of ‘whither Modi, whether Modi?’ will come to a close on May 23, the day the earth will shift on its axis and for millions it will be either a new dawn or the same, sit on the porch and watch the twilight throw its shadows. Either way, the journalist can only chronicle. The Economist’s Agent Orange has said his piece and Aatish Tasveer has added his words in Time!

Controversy regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent statement that former prime minister was “a number one corrupted leader” refuses to die down as the Congress hasn't taken it lightly. The grand old party and its associates have been strictly denouncing Modi as according to them such comments are unsuitable for a prime minister.

Nursing ambition is not bad, more so for a politician. The day a person enters into politics he aspires to becoming a minister if not the chief minister. But for Nitish Kumar politics has been more than obsession. If Kumar has been obsessed with power at the same time he has been egocentric about his image and intriguingly fearful of his survival.

The Election Commission under T N Seshan, described as a maverick by some but by some others as the most conscientious and independent poll official the country has ever seen, was expanded to include more members to restrain the Chief Election Commissioner from overreaching. But with the incumbent Election Commission, inaction has become its trade mark and it is the height of irony that the presence of more members is bringing at least a semblance of activity within Nirvachan Sadan, though it has not made any difference on the ground.

By the time this column appears in print only one phase of election—May 19—would have been left. What appears certain, and can be predicted with certainty, is that no party—neither the BJP nor the Congress-- is going to get a majority. Chances are that the BJP, along with its allies, may emerge as the single largest party and Narendra Modi may become the Prime Minister again but a weak one. Even senior leader of the BJP, Ram Madhav, has gone on record, saying that the BJP will not get majority. The Shiv Sena has also firmly indicated that there is no chance of BJP getting a majority. The BJP has inevitably to depend on other parties to form the government. That means lot of bargaining and horse trading.

The prime minister, Narendra Modi thinks himself to be the most intelligent and wise person. It is not his fault. Everyone treats himself as the most intelligent person in the world. But the only exception between Modi’s intelligence and other’s is Modi is exposed every time he opens his mouth. For his partymen and saffron vigilantes he might be speaking the truth, nothing but truth, but a common Indian knows that he was speaking the lies and only lies.

The Rajiv Gandhi/INS Viraat controversy, instigated by a Prime Minister who refuses to be in the present but likes to meander in the past, largely to influence the present, resurrects memories in teenagers and youth of the mid-1980s, especially those of the Lakshadweep islands, for whom the visit of a Prime Minister of India into the archipelago was exciting times though it was impossible for anybody to get a glimpse of the elite VVIP party getting a layer of sand on their skin.

While the decisive moment for the ruling dispensation at the centre is impending, more with a possibility of losing the seat of power, it is shocking that the Election Commission (EC) which is tasked to conduct elections in a free and fair manner has stepped in to provide a helping hand to the ruling party by its lenient and outright partisan approach in dealing with serious and totally unacceptable violations of model code of conduct by the prime minister and BJP president. The model code of conduct has no meaning for the ruling party. With the EC openly protecting them, they continue to incite and polarize voters in the name of religion and national defence.