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KOLKATA: So far as the outbreak of violence in West Bengal prior to the panchayat polls is concerned, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) is apparently unable to exercise a total control on proceedings. Given the TMC’s overwhelming dominance at all levels of political activity, the spirited response from even a disjointed opposition has surprised observers.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi has taken ownership of the die cast by the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party combine and challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to contest and win the Varanasi constituency against a united opposition candidate in the next elections. “He will lose,” Rahul declared in Karnataka, which goes to polls on May 12, and which the party has to retain to get through to the quarterfinals and the semi-finals.

It is a matter of great concern that the country’s apex legislature, Parliament of India, is finding it increasingly difficult to legislate, if one goes by the outcome of the second part of the less-than-five- week-long budget session, 2018-19, that ended within minutes of its last business day on April 6. The valedictory reference by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan mentioned that ‘due to interruptions and forced adjournments the business of the lower house was disrupted for 127 hours and 45 minutes’ and the house had to work overtime for nine hours and 47 minutes to transact very urgent government businesses. In total, Lok Sabha, where the ruling party combination has a overwhelming majority, sat only for a little over 34 hours. Rajya Sabha managed to sit for 44 hours. Several pending bills could not be introduced for legislation by the respective departmental ministers. The most important of them in terms of social consequence was the anti-trafficking bill. The latter is hanging fire since 2016.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Courting controversies and scoring self-goals seem to have become a habit with the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government.

BHOPAL: Whatever steps Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister takes to win over voters prove counterproductive. He decided to raise the retirement age of government servants from 60 to 62 years. He expected that this decision will add the votes of state government employees and their families to his vote bank. But this decision did not please a substantial number of government servants themselves. Besides, the government had to face the wrath of unemployed youth, whose number runs into several lakhs. The raising of the retirement age has jeopardised chances of employment for the unemployed. Besides, it also affected the prospects of temporary employees who thought that retirement at the age of sixty will cause vacancies which can be filled by them.

Madhya Pradesh is one of the states in the country where infant mortality, child mortality and malnutrition are very high. Reducing infant mortality and child mortality has been a challenge for the government. Still expected success has not been achieved, although IMR (Infant Mortality Rate) and CMR (Child Mortality Rate) have come down in the last few years. For this, the role of immunization is important in preventing disease-related illnesses. Regular vaccination program at the government level is constantly adding new vaccines, so that children can be saved from various diseases. In the last few years, pentavalent, IPV and rota virus were added to the public immunization program. Now in this series PCV vaccine at national level is being added to the regular vaccination program. PCV i.e. (pneumococcal conjugate vaccine) can be prevented from pneumonia and brain fever.

With politicians calling each other names and behaving like alley cats, power shifted to Jodhpur Central Jail where “Mr. Compassionate” Salman Khan, restless and privileged, was counting bars. Overnight in a midnight drama over 200 judicial officers were transferred and the new magistrate in Jodhpur Rural District Court moved quickly to hear Salman’s bail plea.

One day of the gods is supposed to run into thousands of years of that of human beings, according to the Hindu scriptures. Salman Khan is no god, although for his fans he is nearly so. On the basis of the number of days he spent in jail compared to the years of his conviction, a day for Salman would mean roughly two years. This is of course no comparison to the length of the gods’ day, but compared to ordinary mortals, it is quite a long day indeed.

Smriti Irani has been media unfriendly since she took over the charge of the sensitive Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Her order a couple of months back was to cancel forthwith the allotment of a small room occupied by the Press Association, oldest organization of accredited journalists to the government of India, in the National Media Centre. The room to the Press Association was allotted years back when Press Information Bureau was in Shastri Bhavan. The successive I & B ministers never thought of throwing out the office bearers of the Association who functioned from the room.

Tamil Nadu has been in a state of political ferment since the demise of its most formidable AIADMK Chief Minister, Ms. J. Jayalalithaa in December 2016. First two rival factions, each claiming Amma's legacy, patched up for power and are tenuously holding office without an established majority. It is now under growing challenge from both a seemingly strong section of AIADMK dissidents as well as the major Dravidian rival DMK, lately gaining state-wide resurgence, under the party's vigorous leadership of Mr M K Stalin.