။ Lok Sabha Vote, 2009

Poll woe looms for West Bengal left

Subir Bhaumik, BBC News, Kolkata, 8 April : The left is expected to lose many seats in its West Bengal heartland. With a fortnight left to the start of India's parliamentary elections, the country's left-wing parties are trying hard to push a "Third Front" in opposition to the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led coalitions.

The left has tied up with strong lower-caste parties in a number of states and with some regional parties like the ruling BJD, a former BJP ally, in the eastern state of Orissa. But the left's success in stitching together this apparently unwieldy coalition depends greatly on its own performance in its strongest bastion, the state of West Bengal, where a left-wing coalition has now ruled for more than three decades.

Going by current trends, that will not be an easy task. READ MORE

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Security beefed up in Purulia district
PTI, Purulia, 8 April : Security measures in Maoist infested Purulia district was beefed up on Wednesday in view of polling on 30 April. In a joint press conference in Purulia, District Magistrate Santanu Bose and Superintendent of Police Rajesh Yadav said 500 persons were arrested so far. Eleven check posts within 380 km radius between Purulia and Bokaro and Ramgarh in Jharkhand will be sealed ten days before the polls. Police are keeping close watch on the safety and security of villagers in 430 earmarked localities. A helicopter has been kept ready for use in naxal infested areas of Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore. High officials are keeping close watch on the movement of maoists.

Earlier, Debasis Sen state’s Chief Electoral Officer visited the Maoist infested areas of Jangalmahal and alerted all concerned about security measures.

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Tripura to use helicopter during Lok Sabha election

Agartala, 8 April : The Ministry of Defence has allotted two helicopters to Tripura for five days during general election to be held on 23 April for security surveillance, election officials said here today. Additional Chief Election Officer Dilip Acharjee told mediapersons that with the instruction from Election Commission of India (ECI), the Centre had assured Tripura to provide the aircraft considering the security issue.”

Both the choppers will be made available on 20 April for five days in the state and these will be used for air surveillance on the day of the poll and continue to be used until all the EVMs enter into the strong room,” Acharjee said. Though the helicopters would be provided by the Defence Ministry, the entire expenditure Rs 50,000 per hour if used and Rs 36,000 per day if not used has to be borne by the state government.

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Third Front certain to win Lok Sabha polls, asserts Karat in Agartala Poll rally
Agaratala, 5 April : CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat Sunday said it was now “thousand percent confirmed” that the Third Front with the Left parties in the lead would form the government at the centre after the Lok Sabha polls.
“While the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has already broken, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not a single ally in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and many other states,” he said, addressing an election rally in the Tripura capital.
In his 30-minute speech, the CPI-M chief cited the “wrong and anti-people policies” of both the Congress and the BJP and stressed the importance of forming an alternative government at the centre. Karat said as the left parties intervened in the central government’s policies till July last year, the effect of world-wide economic slowdown was yet to impacted on the Indian economy.”
Talking to the newsmen later, the CPI(M) leader, however, refused to predict how many seats the Left parties and other alliance parties of Third Front expected to win. “The Left parties alone are fighting more than 150 seats and if the parties aligned with the Third Front are taken into account, the combine is fighting far more seats than the Congress party,” he said. ။ Photo Courtesy : Desher Katha

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Obama effect : Web-lobbying takes off in Indian Poll
Kolkata, 5 April : With the largest democracy of the world going to polls this month, campaigning for the 15th Lok Sabha election has ventured into a new dimension of web-lobbying. And, the virtual world is not just limited to serious poll business but the fun quotient is also present in the run-up to the election. The trend of using social media to create awareness and promoting candidates and parties is fast catching on in India, this time.
"The trendsetter is definitely Barack Obama. Indian politicians have realized web-lobbying will help them garner more support and a wider base," said Pulak Barua, product development manager of V-empower, regarding the growing acceptance of web-lobbying in India.

Incidentally, his firm has done web-lobbying for politicians in the UK and the US. In India, V-empower has done that for L K Advani, Renuka Chowdhury and Chandrababu Naidu to name a few. "The popularity is such that we are getting offers for web lobbying from various quarters every single day," said Barua.
There is a difference though between international political clients and the Indian leaders. "International politicians know their target audience and have the data in place. Initially, politicians here did not want the site and once they get it, they do not use it. In 2004, too, we created a couple of sites but it never picked up because the response from the politicians was poor," he said.
A French e-lobbying site based on blogs, incidentally, features the forthcoming Indian elections. The website is seeking prospective clients interested in web-lobbying. Shifting from serious election business, many sites have also come up to create awareness through sheer fun. For instance, citizens can write manifestoes and decide them for the government through http://www.election.lordsofodds.com/! The popular ones get voted by the other members also.
The Hyderabad-based 7Seas Technologies have launched five online games based on the polls. Within a fortnight of its launch, the games have got more than 3 lakh hits. "We had created a game before the US presidential election, which was highly successful. We tried the same this time anticipating similar popularity. Majority of the players are Indian young adults in the age group of 18-20 years," said Maruthi Sanker, managing director of 7Seas.
Though offers have poured in for ads and web lobbying as part of the online games from various parties, Sanker and his team want to keep it fun-based. While national parties are going all out to make the most of the new phenomenon, the regional ones are yet to get off the blocks. "India still has a long way to go for web lobbying," said Barua.

။ Lok Sabha Vote, 2009

န Government gearing up for police action in Lalgarh
Kolkata, 4 April : The WB state government is gearing up for a pre-poll offensive in Lalgarh, state home secretary Ardhendu Sen said on Saturday. Reiterating the government stand on Lalgarh, he said: "Police action is necessary for holding peaceful elections in Lalgarh. Without police, there will be no election there and it will appear as if the government is boycotting the polls. We can't allow that."
A high-level meeting was being held at Writers' Buildings on Saturday to formulate the course of police action in Lalgarh. The home secretary said the government's course of action will be made known in the next seven days.
Left Front chairman Biman Bose said on Saturday that the so-called checkposts set up by Chhatradhar Mahato's People's Committee against Police Atrocities at Barabeliachowk and Ramgarg were an assault on democracy. The checkposts have been put up to bar policemen and the ruling party supporters from entering Lalgarh. Reacting to this, Bose said: "This is an infringement on the constitutional rights of citizens."
It is clear that both the Left and the state government are confronted with a huge challenge to conduct elections in Lalgarh, considering that the police and the administration are not being allowed to enter the area. Of the 41 polling stations in the area, police have been able to enter only about 14 of those areas till now. Senior officials are making aerial surveys of the area in helicopters.

။ Lok Sabha Vote, 2009

န CPI(M) demands constitution of assembly for Andaman and Nicobar
Port Blair, 4 April : CPI(M) is contesting the only seat of Andaman & Nicobar in the union territory of Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Tapan Bepari, state secretariat member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and former president of the state unit of the All India Kisan Sabha is the candidate for this seat. Tapan belongs to the weaker section of the settlers’ family. He is a lawyer by profession.
This constituency has about 3-4 lakhs of voters. Nicobar group of islands is predominantly a tribal dominated area with about 20 thousand registered voters. The Andaman group of islands is largely populated by settlers. It can be divided into north, middle and southern parts. While Bengali speaking people dominate in north and middle parts, Tamil speaking people dominate the southern part. The southern part of Andaman also has people having Telugu and Malayalam as their mother tongue. The city of Port Blair lies in the south.
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Rebel zones 'Junglemohal' get 2 hours less to vote
Jhargram, 3 April : Voting will close two hours early in Maoist pockets in Jhargram and Purulia. The official polling time is 7am to 5pm, but in Bandwan and Binpur in the Jhargram seat, and Joypur, Bagmundi and Balarampur in the Purulia constituency, polling will end at 3pm because of security reasons.
Debashis Sen, the state’s chief electoral officer, completed a tour of the Maoist-infested areas before making the announcement today. He also said a resident from each polling booth area would be selected by the district magistrates to act as a “volunteer” on polling day. Each will be given the phone number of the local polling official to be contacted in case any untoward incident takes place.
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CEO pleads with villagers not to boycott the vote
Ranibandh, 1 April : In the remote jungles of Ranibandh in southern Bankura, WB chief electoral officer Debashis Sen was pursuing a very different trail this morning. Far removed from reading out the Election Commission’s diktats from his office in Kolkata. He was listening to the complaints of villagers in this Maoist-infested pocket of south Bengal and subtly persuading them not to boycott this year’s general election to protest “lack of development” in their area.The region, which includes adjoining Purulia and West Midnapore, will go to the polls on 30 April. Boycott of polls is not uncommon here. Many villagers in this tribal belt had not voted in the 2006 Assembly elections either.The chief electoral officer, who stayed overnight at Mukutmanipur, will tour Purulia tomorrow.
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Bengal's Maoists issue threat on CEO's Lalgarh visit
Howrah, 1 April : On the day when WB's chief electoral officer Debashish Sen is on the way to visit troubled Lalgarh in West Midnapore, CPI (Maoist) state secretary Kanchan issued a statement claiming that Maoists will continue to remain in the heart of the people of Jangalmahal.Kanchan said that Red rebels still don't believe in the election process. He said CPI (Maoist) and Peoples' Liberation Guerrilla army will lead from the front in case of police action in Jangalmahal. The statement read that the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government was preparing for another mass-killing by sending police to Lalgarh. Since November 2008, police have not been able to enter the area.
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North West Bengal's tribal body to boycott polls
Siliguri, 1 April : Akhil Bharatiya Adivashi Vikash Parishad (ABAVP), a tribal body in West Bengal's northern hills, Wednesday announced that they will boycott the Lok Sabha elections in the Terai-Dooars region of the state.'We had given a memorandum to the Jalpaiguri administration over a month back, asking for a separate constituency at Terai-Dooars to be reserved for Scheduled Tribes,' John Barla, ABAVP's Terai and Dooars co-ordination committee president, said here. Barla said about 60 percent of the total population of Terai-Dooars are tribals.

။ Lok Sabha Vote, 2009

The schedule of the five-phase elections for the 15th Lok Sabha has been announced and if there is one word to describe the political slugfest, it has to be 'Unpredictable'.
The arithmetic could work either way and almost all political parties are nervous about going to the polls. Equally, the people of India are uncertain about what the elections will ultimately throw up....

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