THE glorious history and inspiring experience of the Left-led tribal movement in Tripura was highlighted by the newly-elected member of parliament from the Tripura East (ST) seat and former minister in the Left Front government of Tripura, Jitendra Chaudhury, in the CPI(M)’s Thane district study camp held recently in the Comrade Godavari Shamrao Parulekar Bhavan at Talasari. Over 300 leading activists of the Party – most of them tribals – attended this camp which was specially held in the wake of the Lok Sabha poll results.

AT long last, more than a month long grueling elections for forming the sixteenth Lok Sabha are over. With eighty two crore registered voters – this was easily the biggest show of the citizens’ democratic exercise of their franchise not only to choose their representatives – but they in turn would choose the new government. After three decades, the people have chosen a government where a single party has got an absolute majority. In that sense this was a decisive verdict.

NITIN Aage, a dalit youth studying in Class X of Kharda village in Jamkhed tehsil of Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra, was brutally murdered in broad daylight on April 28. (See People’s Democracy, May 05-11 issue.) His crime (really!?) was that he had fallen in love with a girl of a so-called high caste. He was mercilessly beaten up, his hands and legs were broken with a hammer, and then he was strangulated to death. After this heinous act, moreover, the culprits hung the dead body from a tree and tried to give the impression that Nitin had committed suicide.

THROUGH a statement issued from New Delhi on April 28, 2014, the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) strongly condemned the attack on Shabnam Hashmi in Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh. She was attacked at about 12.30 p m on April 28  while she with her associates was distributing leaflets brought out by JAVAB (Janvadi Vichar Andolan Bharat) barely 100 metres from the Gadaganj police station in side the Rae Bareli  constituency.