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New Delhi: A Judicial Commission is likely to visit Pakistan next week to investigate about 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.

Political parties in Andhra Pradesh, ever in internecine warfare over the decades-old demand for a new Telengana State, have little expectation of any immediate moves by the Centre on an explosive issue, at the meeting called by Home Minister Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde on December 28. It may have been designed as a holding operation to keep the parties at peace and to urge them to await a new deal, balancing the interests of the State’s three regions in the broader context of 2014 elections.

Now that the first phase of polling in Gujarat has been completed, it is time to look at the post-poll scenario. What appears clear is that Narendra Modi is certain to romp home for the third time but with a reduced majority. That will mean that his aspiration to become the BJP’s prime ministerial candidates will be diluted.

The national agenda for securing the means of existence and livelihood for the lowest of the low is yet an unfinished agenda. A large number of our fraternity is still suffering under precarious conditions and leading a totally insucure life without even food security. And, our political establishments, are fighting not for these ‘Have nots’ but for ‘Haves’.

KOLKATA: Yet another problem in the Northeast awaits the Centre. It will have to take this up after the end of the monsoon session of Parliament: the demand for a Kuki State. The demand for creating ever-new states continues to be made – Telengana today, Gorkhaland tomorrow, Vidarbha another day. The latest in this line is the demand for carving out a Kuki State in Manipur.

After Wal-Mart’s admission that it spent money on lobbyists to enter the estimated half-a-trillion-dollar-plus Indian retail market, the questions deeply troubling the minds of the common man in India are: how much of it has percolated into the pockets of Indian politicians; who are the local bribe-handlers who are the receivers and was it used to rig the voting in Parliament against FDI in retail?