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LUCKNOW: Finding it very tough to retain the 73 seats it won with help of allies, BJP is playing aggressive ‘kamandal’ and Mandal cards for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The setting aside by the Kerala High Court of the election of Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) legislator K M Shaji constitutes a severe setback for the party, which is the second most powerful constituent of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).

Running battle between the country’s central bank and the union finance ministry is matter which should not ordinarily concern the common man. It should however become a cause for worry if these start hitting the nation’s economy. From the present indications, unfortunately this is what is beginning to happen. Another meeting of the RBI board is set for November 19 and the central bank and the members of the board might clash once again.

Stage is set for the high stakes elections to five states — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Telangana — this week. The BJP and the Congress are engaged in an almost direct fight in most of these states. Though the results would be known only on December 11, there is a lot of election related excitement in the rest of the country as these are seen as mini general elections, a dress rehearsal for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and will shape the national mood.

The second anniversary of the landmark transfer of money passed us last week and we didn’t even check the small change in our pockets. How mean can a people who got crisp new notes for soiled currency be? Modi now acknowledges that it was all a fraud played on innocent hoi polloi and that Modi has no face to face up to the truth staring him in the face – demonetisation was a scam!

BHOPAL: Both Congress and BJP have initiated efforts to persuade their rebel candidates to withdraw their nominations. November 14 is the last day for withdrawal.

For the time being, Justice Indu Malhotra’s dissent on women’s entry into the Swami Ayyappa Temple rules. The warlike postures hold but the war drums will beat less and less till the old and the middle-aged will wilt in break-heart pass. A couple of generations, and Swami Ayyappan will lose his Aadhaar card. There exists a young horde, who does not want to reveal their hand, yet. But what use the high human indices Kerala has achieved if the arcane and superstitious are not cast asunder.

Every year, the most diligent promoters of Armistice Day promise something new and different. The broadcasting media, in particular, tell us they will not only be commemorating the scores of millions who perished in 20th-century wars. They will, we are assured, be looking at why they died — not just at who, how and where. Yet this never happens. Nor could it, without exposing the whole history of deception, delusion, hypocrisy, betrayal, barbarism and exploitation that is the real history of British imperialism.

Europe is currently reliving through the painful memories of its history. More particularly, that part of its recent history in the first half of the twentieth century when two bloody wars had devastated the continent and decimated its population.

The constitutional coup – his critics say highly unconstitutional – that Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena sought to carry off by sacking Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointing Mahinda Rajapaksa in his place has landed him in a soup. Not only did Wickremesinghe challenge the President by telling him that under the constitution he was still the Prime Minister and would not vacate his official residence Temple Tree, Sirisena found to his dismay that his action had invited criticism of the U.S. and other Western countries.