Lok Sabha elections 2024 are almost touching the halfway mark with three phases down and four more to go. All political parties are trying to control the narrative, complaints have been filed with ECI for violating the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) and even hate-mongering. The newsrooms are busy playing number games and predictions.
Amidst all this, for those who miss the voices from the ground, about real issues influencing voters, Outlook’s reporters are covering as many places as possible. In this issue, Outlook reporters bring reports from Kashmir to Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra to West Bengal.
Kashmir gets a chance to break its silence through these elections. Where does the politics of Kashmir stand five years after abrogation of Article 370. Interestingly, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is using abrogation of Article 370 as a poll plank across the country but isn’t contesting a single seat in the Valley.
From the west read ground reports of Maharashtra’s fisher folk community who struggles to survive the corporatised ports, family feud in Pawar bastion, and how Goans are facing ethnic faultlines amidst elections.
Nandigram, the town which shook West Bengal in 2007 and proved to be a turning point in the state’s politics, where does the farmers stand after all these years? Have their lives changed for better or for worse?
In Northern Karnataka, the traditional strongholds of BJP communal polarisation is ripe while a conflict is seen brewing between Dalits and Adivasis.
The high number of registered women voters in these elections has been talk of the town and parties are trying their best to woo them. In Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras, Is the gruesome rape incident of 2020 becoming a poll issue?
Outlook reporters also bring stories from Bihar with bahubalis still affecting political arena in some parts, Andhra Pradesh and of prominent faces in West Bengal politics.
