In a meet the press programme held in Calcutta Press Club on April 27, Surjya Kanta Misra, secretary of the CPI(M), West Bengal state committee, said, ‘Everyday TMC is now taking a roll call of its MLA’s to find out,  how many are left, and how many have gone to BJP. But this roll calling will not save the party. Soon the entire TMC will be transformed to BJP, as it happened in Tripura.’When journalists asked him why people are joining BJP, leaving TMC and CPI(M), Surjya replied, ‘In our(Left) rule of 34 years, West Bengal had never witnessed this game of switch over.

PEOPLE in the East Tripura parliamentary constituency exercised their voting rights in large numbers on April 23 despite attempts by goons of the ruling BJP to intimidate them.

The filing of nomination paper of Amra Ram, CPI(M) candidate from Sikar was held on April 15 at Sikar. Thousands of women and men coming from different shades of life, representing organisations of kisans, youth, workers women etc., joined Amra Ram in his nomination exercise. Vasudev, and  Badal Saroj, former CPI(M) state secretaries of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh states’ respectively, joined the ‘nomination march’.

THE election campaign of CPI(M) Central Committee member, former AIKS state president and one of the outstanding leaders of the two Kisan Long Marches, J P Gavit, MLA, for the Dindori (ST) Lok Sabha seat, is now in full swing. It began on April 4, 2019 with a massive 25,000-strong public meeting at Chandwad that was addressed by CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury (reported earlier in these columns).

THE fight to exercise the right to vote has assumed a new dimension in West Bengal. In the first phase, large number of booths were captured particularly in Cooch Behar. TMC armed gangs had chased away voters and opposition polling agents from the polling booths in many areas of the constituency. The token presence of central para military forces was of no use. In the second phase, in Raiganj, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, there was large scale resistance of the people. In Raiganj, for example, citizens formed human chain days before the polling demanding free and fair voting.