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As Don Draper of AMC’s hit series Mad Men likes to say, “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”

Mathura constituency polled in the second phase of polling April 18. BJP candidate and two-time MP from the constituency, Hema Malini, said she would win. But there’s the SP-BSP-RLD Gathbandhan to contend with. The Gathbandhan has fielded an RLD candidate against Hema. The question for Hema Malini: Is the Gathbandhan working at the ground level? Polling took place in eight Uttar Pradesh constituencies in the second phase. These are technically still Western Uttar Pradesh constituencies and include Congress leader Raj Babbar’s Fatehpur Sikri, which borders Agra, another of the ‘8’, where there’s clear division of urban and rural voters.

Chetan Vasantrao Jayle is a 26-year-old young man hailing from Amravati, Maharashtra. His career prospects brightened up when he completed his engineering course in IT from Government College of Engineering, Amaravati. Bright future opened up before him when he landed a job at Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS), Pune, an IT multinational with headquarters at New Jersey, USA, and joined the ranks of its nearly 200,000 workforce in India.

BHOPAL: Finally failing to persuade any party stalwart to challenge Digvijaya Singh the BJP had to borrow an outsider to take up the task on Bhopal Lok Sabha seat. Perhaps BJP realised that Hindu-Muslim polarisation strategy may alone yield the result. How much importance the BJP gave to Bhopal can be appreciated by the fact that the party decided to rush its organisation secretary Ram Lal to Bhopal to formally adopt Pragya Thakur as a party member. After three hours of her admission in the party, she was named as party candidate for Bhopal seat. According to BJP insiders Thakur’s candidature has been decided at the behest of RSS, the Sangh fountain head.

Britain’s shadow Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn has vowed that a future Labour government will abolish hated primary school SATs. The Labour leader made the pledge in a barnstorming speech at the National Education Union’s (NEU) annual conference in Liverpool.

The world over, as authoritarian regimes goose step forward, the right to free speech and expression has become centre stage. India has just seen its “Pentagon Papers” moment in the Rafale judgment; the US will face its greatest challenge to the First Amendment with the arrest of Julian Assange in the UK and his threatened extradition. Whistleblowers and organizations dedicated to free speech have swung into action to protect the rights of journalists. As the original whistleblower of the Pentagon Papers in an interview from London said if Julian Assange is extradited and charged with espionage, the threat to all journalists the world over is clear. Every journalist is under threat.

With election fever picking up, the blame game is increasing with every passing day. Issues concerning the people are not being highlighted as they should have been. The ruling party has very cleverly brought the rhetoric against Pakistan as core issue. The speeches by the first rank leadership are by and large ignoring the issues of health and education. Even though the points related to healthcare have been mentioned in the manifestos of the various parties but until and unless they are emphasized by the leadership in their public discourses time and again, these do not become part of people’s mind. A critical analysis of the manifesto of two major parties shows some differences in the approach.

Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu need not have cautioned Muslim voters to unite against the BJP and vote Congress, thereby inviting possible action from the Election Commission. BSP supremo Mayawati also should not have asked Muslims to vote en bloc SP and RLD candidates. Not because the calls were cries in the wilderness, but because if any section of the electorate is en bloc against Narendra Modi, it is the Muslim electorate; it’s the Muslim community. Ask any Ayesha or Azam; Farida or Farooq.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been giving regular long interviews to the television channels and the national newspapers in the recent days and in all, he is skillfully trying to avoid the issue of demonetization impact and instead making the point that this” historic” step taken by him on November 8, 2016 helped in bringing about a transparent economy. He is saying blatant untruths on the impact of make in India programme and is keeping silent on the number of job losses during the last five years of his reign despite the devastating employment situation mentioned in a number of studies made by the reputable institutions.

With the Election Commission of India’s(ECI’s) public credibility having sunk the lowest in the ongoing General Elections 2019 to the Lok Sabha (House of the People) with its inability toenforce the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) with iron hand allowing all political parties and individual Independent candidates a level playing field, the political discourse in the electioneering campaign has been most toxic, polarizing, divisive and full of hatreds as never before. Such vicious campaign is led by the Prime Minister and the ruling Bhartya Janata Dal (BJP) Chief, which is also unprecedented. ECI has, so far, been a silent spectator. Now that it has been woken up by the Supreme Court of India, it has responded feebly to hate crimes in the electioneering speeches of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Bahujan Samajwadi Party chief, Union Minister for Women and Child Development, an eminent leader of Samajwadi Party by banning them from electioneering campaign for 72 hours to 48 hours, the real test of ECI will be in censuring the Prime Minister and BJP Chief for their hate campaign as also seeking votes in the name of security forces, Balakot strikes and Pulwama terror attack on CRPF convoys without explaining how the lone wolf terrorist came to strike with a heavy loads of improvised explosive devices when the entire Jammu-Srinagar highway was prohibited to private transport and public for three days and fully sanitised.