THE election campaign of the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is resorting to open appeals based on religion. It has made the Ram temple an election issue and dubbed some of the opposition parties as being against the temple and Lord Ram. This is a blatant violation of the model code of conduct and some of the speeches should come under the purview of relevant provisions of the Indian Penal code for inciting hatred and inflaming religious sentiments.The chief offender has been Narendra Modi himself.

THE arrest and detention of Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of Delhi, by the Enforcement Directorate is a turning point in the steady erosion of democracy in India. This brazen assault on the democratic system is a first in many respects. It is the first time a sitting chief minister whose party commands more than four-fifth majority in the assembly has been arrested, for the first time the head of a national political party has been put behind bars.

THREE developments have taken place in the last week, on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections – one is positive and the other two are negative. The first issue is the Supreme Court’s order directing the State Bank of India to submit to the Election Commission by March 12 the details of electoral bonds and asking the Election Commission to put it up on their website by March 15.  This order comes in the wake of SBI’s appeal for a time of four months till June 30 to submit all the details about the bonds.The Supreme Court has firmly rejected this appeal and finally the people will come to know

THE BJP has launched a full-fledged drive to organise defections from the Congress and some other opposition parties.  After getting Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD to defect to the BJP, there has been a spate of defections of individual leaders, MLAs and former legislators of the Congress in different states.In the past one month alone, there was the declaration by two Congress MLAs in Assam of supporting the BJP government in the state; one of them was the working president of the Assam Congress.  This was followed by the defection of Ashok Chavan, former chief minister an

THE finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, in her interim budget speech announced the setting up of a high-powered committee “to study the challenges of fast population growth and demographic changes”.  The announcement of such a committee in a budget speech was itself a curious one.  If the government intended to frame a new population policy based on a committee to study population growth, it should have found a mention in the president’s address to parliament.The purpose of the high-powered committee is also unclear as the fact of “fast population growth” is itself a contestable one.  Fur