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Having had the unique privilege of presenting several General Budgets of the country as the Finance Minister first way back in 1996-98 and twice during the decade-long dispensation of the UPA coalition for as many as eight times, the Harvard-educated Palaniappan Chidambaram will before long be out of this arduous assignment with the nation going to the poll to constitute the 16th Lok Sabha.

KOLKATA: For understandable reasons, the BJP is the only political party in India not to be dismissive about opinion polls and pre-election surveys, even as the decks are being cleared for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

With Arvind Kejriwal deciding to contest from Varanasi, the battle from this eastern UP constituency has become spicy. Kejriwal has announced his candidature in his own style, but he could not attract the crowd he expected, when he was making his announcement to fight from Varanasi. The poor attendance at the Beniyabag ground indicates that he may not be even in the main contest, but no one doubts that he would continue to grab media attention with his style of electioneering and by raising big issues.

Over the past month, Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal did something no other leader has so far done to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Prime Ministerial nominee Narendra Modi. He embarked on an “inspection tour” of Gujarat, talked to hundreds of ordinary people about their experience of the state’s hyped-up “development record”, and confronted Mr Modi with more than a dozen questions ranging from corruption and sweetheart deals with Big Business, to starvation-level wages for workers, closure of small-scale industries and suicides by 800 farmers.

When the Shiv Sena speaks sense, it is time to take note. The attention is called for all the more when the abrasive outfit talks of the BJP because it understands its longstanding saffron partner much better than anyone else. The Shiv Sena’s observation, therefore, that while the Narendra Modi era may have started, the L.K. Advani era has not yet ended is one of the first expressions of unease over the Gujarat strong man’s rising profile.

For the first time, stock market demonstrated a reverse gear to the poll scenario. Despite poll portending a fractured polity, stock market vibrates confidently in the pre-poll rally. Uncertainty looms large over prospects of a hung government. Yet, BSE Sensex boomed to 21,950 on March 10, 2014 from 21,171 in December 2013, registering a growth by 3.7 percent – the highest ever in any pre-election rally. In pre-election rally in 2009, held in April-May, Sensex reached 9,708.5 by March-end and in 2004, held in May-June, Sensex increased to 5,590.6 by March-end. The boom in 2014 pre-election rally deflates worries of the impact of poll uncertainty on stock market, even though a hung government could inflict delay in policies and uncertainty in reforms.

BHOPAL: The distribution of tickets for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections was not smooth for both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party members in the state. Both parties are facing internal mini-revolts.

Bollywood often self-congratulates itself for its self-styled stride towards enhanced refines of its movies and proclaims that its films are almost touching global standards. While that may only be true for selected movies of a handful of directors or actors, genuine refinement in a Bollywood mainstream movie is still a far cry. Instead, what has developed is the manifestation of raw Indian regional power and snobbery on the celluloid. Interestingly, this condensation isn’t naïve either, but very much informed by profit-making factors. The only things absent are propriety and principle.

LUCKNOW: Powerful cabinet minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government, and the Muslim face of Samajwadi Party, Mohd Azam Khan has staked his prestige with the Rampur seat in the Lok Sabha elections.

All eyes are focused on Varanasi after BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, 63-year-old Narendra Modi, decided to contest election from the holy city. And now, Modi faces a new challenge in form of the indefatigable Arvind Kejriwal. The Aam Aadmi Party convener has already raised the pitch by relentlessly attacking the ‘Modi model’. With emergence of Kejriwal as a candidate from Varanasi, the holy city is bound to witness a David versus Goliath battle