CEC rules out possibility of holding simultaneous Lok Sabha, Assembly polls

Putting to rest all speculation, Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat on Thursday emphatically ruled out the possibility of holding simultaneous elections to the state assemblies along with the Lok Sabha polls without a "legal framework" in place.

"Koi chance nahi" (no chance at all), Rawat told a select media meet in Aurangabad when asked if it was still feasible to hold simultaneous Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections.

The Lok Sabha elections are due in April-May next year while Assembly polls to Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan and Mizoram are scheduled to be held later this year.

Provide alternative to Modi's bogus 'Achche Din' promise: Rahul to Cong MPs

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that corruption, economic failure, incompetence and spread of social divisiveness have peaked under the Narendra Modi government and asked party MPs to provide an alternative.

Addressing the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) meeting in Parliament House, he said there is a rising tide of anger against the ruling dispensation and party MPs must work hard to give people an alternative to the bogus promise of Modiji's 'Achche Din'.

People of India are looking up to the Congress and its allied parties to help remove the Modi government and replace it with one which will listen to them, understand their problems and provide solutions to help reduce poverty, unemployment and inequality in the country, the Congress president said.

There is a great responsibility that is being placed on all of us today, to win this historic struggle between the forces of democracy and social justice versus those of autocracy and social hierarchy, he said.

After successful Gujarat show, Rahul Gandhi embarks on winning hearts in UP

After leading from the front in the Gujarat Assembly polls that saw his party improving its show, Congress President Rahul Gandhi is now focusing on Uttar Pradesh to galvanise party cadres in the run-up to 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
First time after donning the mantle of the party chief, Gandhi is all set to pay a two-day visit to his Lok Sabha constituency Amethi.

Though party workers are excited by his anointment and have planned a grand reception in Amethi, they are aware that the path for their young leader will not be easy in Uttar Pradesh where its electoral foray in the assembly polls had been anything but encouraging.
"The new party president knows the state well, has a personal rapport with party leaders and workers in Uttar Pradesh... we are ready to work hard with him in the field," Congress spokesman Amar Nath told PTI.

"The Congress will definitely work out ways and means to galvanise the party in Uttar Pradesh in order to make a big impact in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls," he added.
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Rural debt, distress, death to be in focus as 8 states go to polls in 2018

Nearly four in ten of 8,007 Indian farmers who committed suicide in 2015 were in debt, compared to two in ten in 2014; more rural households went into debt over 11 years; and the average rural household had borrowed Rs 1.03 lakh, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of government data.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost 16 seats in rural Gujarat–winning less than 40% of such constituencies–as unrest grew in a failing farm economy. As eight states, including the BJP-run, largely agrarian states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan go to the polls this year, we investigate, in a two-part series, how rural debt, distress and death are growing nationwide.

In an era of increasingly uncertain weather and suicides on farms, attributed to climate change and likely to worsen, the rural economic downturn is likely to be an important issue in the general elections of 2019, and it is unlikely Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise that farmers will double their incomes by 2022 will be kept, as IndiaSpend reported in December 2016.

Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan had a collective rural population of 123.6 million in 2011, equivalent to the current population of Mexico, the world’s 11th most populated country. Agricultural growth rates in all three states have declined, Hindustan Times reported in December 2017, while farmer unrest roiled MP and Rajasthan, as farmers struggling with falling crop prices demanded loan waivers and government guarantees for higher prices.
A key manifestation of the distress is rising rate at which farmers are committing suicides and its association with their inability to repay loans.READ MORE