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The draft political resolution released by the CPI(M) for debate among its members on the eve of the 22nd Congress of the Party at Hyderabad on April 18 to 22 this year, is full of contradictory positions. The document prepared by former general secretary of the Party Prakish Karat dashes all hopes of the possibility of building a broad front of the secular and democratic forces including the Congress Party to confront the BJP and its allies in the coming Lok Sabha elections. Though the draft mentions that the main task is to defeat the BJP and its allies by rallying all the secular and democratic forces, it adds “however, this has to be done without having an understanding or electoral alliance with the Congress Party”.

Kamran Yusuf is a Kashmiri photo-journalist. The other day, the National Investigative Agency (NIA) while branding him a ‘stone-pelter’, claimed that he is not a ‘real journalist’ because he never covered developmental projects as genuine journalists do! The “hard-working” freelance photo-journalist has been in detention since September last year.

BHOPAL: Two former chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh by their actions and utterances are keeping their colleagues and party men in suspense. They are Digvijay Singh and Uma Bharti, two rivals. It was Uma Bharti who through her massive and stormy campaign ended the ten year rule of Digvijay Singh, the first politician to rule Madhya Pradesh for continuous ten years. But Bharti overthrew him. Her slogan was that Digvijay had failed on all fronts particularly on “Sadak, Pani and Bijli. The defeat saw Digvijay Singh announce that he would not accept any office for next ten years.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Communist Party of India(Marxist) has come under greater pressure with the arrest of two party workers in connection with the murder of Youth Congress activist Shuhaib.

So who should hang from the rafters for the massive PNB Nirav Modi Scam – the UPA or the NDA? That is apart from nephew Nirav Modi and uncle Choksi and the one or two or scores of PNB officials who enacted the scam for the diamond merchants of India-New York-London-Antwerp-Hong Kong-Singapore-Macau-Malaysia… Clearly, unlike diamonds, scams cannot be ‘forever’.

The 38th prime minister of Nepal Khadga Prasad (KP) Sharma Oli, the chairman of Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist), will 'balance between India and China’, believes editor of Nepal Times, despite his pro-Beijing propensity (a compulsion due to the Madhesi blockade of Nepal in 2015, for which as the PM in his first term), thanks to the successful persuasion by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who led an Indian delegation earlier this month. Swaraj had parleys with not only leaders of CPN (UML), which has 121 members in the 275-member parliament, but the top brass of CPN (Maoist Center) including its chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal a k a Dahal. There are 53 Maoist MPs. The oath-taking ceremony was administered by President Bidhya Devi Bhandari at her official residence in Sheetal Niwas, Kathmandu on Thursday. Oli apart, Lal Babu Pandit and Tham Maya Thapa too sworn in as Minister for Population and Environment and Women, Children and Social Welfare respectively.

No conscientious citizen can gloss over the ill treatment meted to the CRPF jawan Mujahid Khan, who died fighting militants in Jammu on Monday. He was offered an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh by the NDA government of Bihar, but intriguingly, gunner Kishore Kumar Munna, who was injured in Pakistani shelling on the Line of Control in Kashmir on February 4 and died on February 11, was given Rs 11 lakh. Any one raising the issue of paying less to Mujahid Khan would be dubbed as the anti-national.

Unemployment in India is likely to become a major political issue in the months to come. It is bound to happen this time because our educated youths are now a frustrated lot as they were hoping something for themselves under the Modi-led NDA rule. It came to power in 2014 promising that unemployment growth that had been dragging the country for the last 10 years of UPA rule would soon be thing of the past. However, nothing like that happened. Unemployment has been getting from bad to worse. Joblessness is even going to increase further in 2018 and 2019. As it stands today, things are set to worsen before general election 2019 to the extent that the government would find itself in a bind.

Congress and the BJP are playing hide and seek with the people of India by blaming each other for the massive banking fraud by Nirav Modi, the diamond dealer to the world’s glitterati. Originally estimated to cost Rs 12,300 crore, the value of the plunder is now scaled up to Rs 30,000 crore. The BJP has added it to the infamous UPA scam list, and is even claiming credit for the ‘alertness of the banking system introduced by the Narendra Modi government’, which according to the party unearthed the fraud. NDA ministers have fished out a 2013 letter written by one of the then directors of Allahabad Bank, complaining to the Reserve Bank and the then finance secretary against granting loans to Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi. Not to be undone by the charge of political complicity, Congress has come out with its own damning evidence to pin down the Modi government by citing a complaint filed by a whistle blower in July 2016 on the entire fraud to Narendra Modi’s office, which, according to Congress, was acknowledged by the PMO.

The election scenario in three Northeastern states – Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya – is extremely complex and the poll equations have been changing fast. Tripura is the first to have assembly election on February 18, followed by Nagaland and Meghalaya on February 27. Incumbents in the three states are expecting major challenges from the BJP which is making aggressive campaign in Tripura as well as Christian dominated tribal states of Nagaland and Meghalaya.