Shivakumar said on Wednesday that the government would revisit the Shakti scheme as some women have expressed their wish to pay for travelling in the government buses.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday said his government has decided to hand over the Hubballi student murder case to the Crime Investigation Department and that a special court will be set up for its speedy disposal.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
The BJP is focusing determinedly on the seats it lost in 2019, with the hope of winning these either independently or with the aid of its allies.
The Bharatiya Janata Party replaced at least 25 sitting MPs with new faces as the party released its second list of 72 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls on Wednesday.
'In Western UP, last time a lot of Dalits voted for the BJP.' 'This time, there is a rethink among Dalits about the extent of their support for the BJP.'
With Karnataka starting release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu in compliance with the directives of the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA), protests have erupted in southern parts of the State.
The Congress on Saturday made a stunning comeback in Karnataka ousting the Bharatiya Janata Party from its lone southern citadel with a comfortable majority in a morale booster win that will be key for reviving its electoral fortunes ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Several pollsters have predicted that the Congress may have an edge in Karnataka, which is BJP's southern citadel, in a hung assembly with a couple of them even projecting that the grand old party may get a majority on its own.
Barring a few, such as Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu (74), Union Minister C R Patil (69) and Uttar Pradesh Finance Minister Suresh Khanna (71), most other ministers attending the WEF represent the next generation of India's politicians.
The Opposition Congress on Saturday seemed to be on course to breach rival Bharatiya Janata Party's lone southern citadel Karnataka, inching towards the magic figure of 113 needed to form a government on its own.
Karnataka Minister for Sugar and Agriculture Marketing Shivanand Patil's statement that farmers wish for repeated droughts in the state so that their loans get waived has caused a stir, with the opposition on Monday terming it as an 'affront' to the farming community and seeking his removal from the Ministry.
The party fielded Maneka Gandhi from Sultanpur, while Uttar Pradesh minister Jitin Prasada has replaced Varun Gandhi in Pilibhit.
To keep the flames under check, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday said the supply of Nandini ghee to make Tirupati laddus was suspended one-and-half years ago, during the BJP government's tenure.
As Karnataka gears up for D-Day, with most exit poll projections predicting a hung assembly while putting the Congress in the lead, the outcome will boil down to how the battle for some key constituencies play out.
Polling is being held for 224 seats in what is being seen mainly as a three-cornered contest between the ruling BJP, the Congress and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda's Janata Dal-Secular.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, former chief minister B S Yediyurappa, IT industry veteran N R Narayana Murthy along with wife Sudha Murty, and Mysuru royal family member 'Rajamate' Pramoda Devi Wadiyar, were among the early voters who cast their ballot in the Karnataka Assembly polls.
He claimed that people from all walks of life across the state were angry against this BJP government.
Surprisingly, the BJP's nearest rival in ad spend was not the Congress, but the Bharat Rashtra Samithi.
There is no use of the BJP targeting the likes of Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin, directly by the party's political bosses, both in Delhi and the respective state capitals, or even using the Raj Bhavans to fire those salvos from. Successive elections have proved that it's counter-productive, if anything. But the BJP is yet to understand it, acknowledge it, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Some explicit video clips allegedly involving Prajwal had started making the rounds in Hassan in recent days.
The Congress' victory in the Karnataka assembly polls is likely to help the party get its candidates elected in three of the four Rajya Sabha seats from the state falling vacant next year.
The Janata Dal-Secular demanded that the Congress government should sack Khan from the Cabinet for his racist slur.
The counting of votes for the bypolls to 46 assembly seats in 13 states and in the Lok Sabha segments of Nanded in Maharashtra and Wayanad in Kerala, a crucial electoral exercise since the parliamentary polls in April-May, will begin at 8 am on Saturday.
The principal opposition party though appeared content securing 99 of the 543 seats in the 2024 national elections as against its all-time low of 44 in 2014 and then 52 in 2019.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday clarified that the administration was only contemplating lifting the ban on wearing hijab in educational institutions in the state and a decision will be taken after holding discussions at the government level.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Tuesday poised to form the government for a third consecutive term with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance getting a majority in the Lok Sabha, notwithstanding crushing losses in three Hindi heartland states after a bitterly fought election that was projected as a referendum on his popularity.
'Women' as a political constituency appears to be an idea that has come of age. It is changing India in ways that we only dimly understand, asserts Aditi Phadnis.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, BJP national general Secretary Dushyant Kumar Gautam, BJP state unit president B Y Vijayendra, and former chief ministers B S Yediyurappa and Basavaraj Bommai were among those present at the legislature party meeting, where R Ashoka was picked as its leader.
As he completed one year in office on Thursday, the Chief Minister also gave a hundred out of hundred score for his government's performance.
The new chief minister, if from the Congress, will have little or no time for political administration, to ensure that he does not lose the voter's goodwill even before the Lok Sabha polls. He can count only on one thing. That the BJP may not want to upset him too early lest an early failure should become an added problem for the party in all the polls to follow, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Both the BJP and the Congress have their share of challenges, with finding winning horses on top of this list.
Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar said his statement on 'Shakti scheme' was distorted and presented as if the Congress government in the state wanted to withdraw it.
Gandhi, who is seeking a second-straight term from Wayanad in Kerala, in a video appeal said this election is to save democracy and the Constitution.
Karnataka Home Minister Dr G Parameshwara on Friday said the government has not taken the incident of filming in a washroom in an Udupi college lightly.
'Karnataka's finances are much healthier than the Union government's, which is indebted to nearly twice the extent of the state.'
The Congress on Sunday took a strong exception to the exclusion of former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru in the Karnataka government's newspaper advertisement on freedom fighters and termed the Bharatiya Janata Party action 'pathetic'.
Karnataka and Maharashtra have bickered over a disputed border for more than half a century.
Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BJP chief J P Nadda and new party entrant Ashok Chavan and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan were among the 41 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday while Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will witness polling on February 27.
Reddy dared the saffron party to prove its claim that the Congress government in the southern state did not fulfil its poll guarantees.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances