Former leader of the Janata Dal-Secular M P Prakash will officially be a Congressman on February 27. He will be formally inducted into the party at a Youth Congress rally to be held in Bangalore, which will be presided over by Rahul Gandhi.
As the Opposition held its first meeting on the Presidential polls and names of Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi also cropped up, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice with senior party leader and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress), Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) and Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal).
Gowda said the campaign will be held in three phases and he will be participate in all three. He also said that a national executive committee meeting of the party will be held in February to take stock of the developments.
Prajwal Revanna, the suspended Janata Dal-Secular MP facing sexual abuse allegations, was arrested on Friday upon his return from Germany, a month after he left the country in the wake of explicit videos of his alleged actions doing the rounds in Karnataka's Haasan.
Crisis gripped an embattled Janata Dal-Secular in Karnataka on Wednesday in the wake of a section of its partymen opening parleys with Congress to revive coalition ties for forming a government to avoid a snap poll and the top brass expressing dissent over the move.
With there being no sign of any reconciliation between any of the political parties in Karnataka, the wait and watch game has begun all over again.
Voting came to an end for the Karnataka assembly elections on Wednesday at 6 pm with data showing a voter turnout of 65.69 per cent an hour ago.
Party stalwarts like Dharam Singh and Mallikarjun Kharge, however, seem to have no problem with the Congress teaming up with the JD-S, as they feel that their main efforts should be directed towards preventing the BJP from coming to power.
The Janata Dal Secular convention to discuss the ongoing power tussle in Karnataka started in Bangalore on Thursday. The main speakers are former PM and JD-S supremo H D Deve Gowda, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy and Home minister Prakash.
According to the Congress, 37 leaders associated with JD-S in the 2018 assembly polls, have joined the party so far, in the run up to the upcoming elections.
Ali said the JD-S did not have a large organisational structure in Uttar Pradesh, which sends most lawmakers to the Parliament.
The BJP leadership knows it can't boast of governance in the state as the Bommai government has little to show. So, the game plan is to project Modi, who will reiterate how important it is for a state to have the same party ruling in power at the Centre, observes Ramesh Menon.
Can Nitishbabu create an anti-BJP phalanx like Jayaprakash Narayan did in 1977 or will his efforts come undone by Opposition leaders' political ambitions and, of course, the BJP's agency-aided campaign of intimidation?
Asked by reporters if there will be surprise candidates in the fray from the Bharatiya Janata Party, he said: "Certainly, there is a plan for new experiments in certain constituencies and they will happen."
The Congress has accused the BJP of carrying out "one of the most heinous" horse-trading the country has ever seen and said it will hold nationwide protests against the "immoral political destabilisation".
Party workers who sat alongside Gowda told rediff.com that the man did not talk a word throughout the cardiac operation which lasted almost three hours.
With most exit polls predicting a tight contest between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the assembly polls in Karnataka, leaders of the two parties seem 'jittery' over the outcome, while the Janata Dal-Secular appears to be expecting a hung verdict, which would enable it to play a role in government formation.
Most of them are sitting legislators and a few of them also served as ministers in the past.
The Congress fielded former Governor Margaret Alva's son Nivedit Alva from the Kumta assembly seat.
Both the eight-time MLA Shivakumar and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah have made no secret of their ambition to become CM and had been involved in a game of political one upmanship in the past.
Top state leaders--Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Congress' Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar and Janata Dal-Secular leader HD Kumaraswamy are contesting from different seats.
A video released on Monday, the second in two days, shows the two leaders presenting a united front in the polls and exchanging notes on the Congress campaign.
The Hassan seat has become a big headache for Janata Dal-Secular, which is witnessing a rebellion within the first family of the party.
The Income Tax department are conducting raids at the Chinnakurli residence of Janata Dal-Secular leader and Karnataka Minor Irrigation Minister CS Puttaraju in Mandya
Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav died in Medanta hospital of Gurugram on Monday. He was 82.
There was considerable disquiet in the Congress after Mukherjee accepted the invitation of the RSS to address its workers at its headquarters in Nagpur.
In Telangana, for more than two months, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao ran his government with just one cabinet colleague Mohammed Mahmood as Home Minister.
Plagued by desertions, internal rifts, and with the image of being a "family party", it remains to be seen how Gowda's son and former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy would steer the party in the May 10 assembly polls.
The Rajya Sabha elections have again highlighted dissension and lack of cohesion in the opposition ranks from Maharashtra to Karnataka and Haryana.
With this, the Cabinet will reach its full strength of 34.
'It's our duty to arrange food and other things for them. Some of them have diabetes and BP, that's why we arranged everything here'
Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday had pitched for Hindi as a common language for the country, reigniting the debate on the issue as a section of political parties in South India said they would oppose any attempt to "impose" the language.
Will the new Congress government implement the five 'guarantees' that helped it in part to wrest power from the Bharatiya Janata Party in toto or will they now add a "conditions apply" clause?
Announcing its first list of 189 candidates on Tuesday, the BJP pitted senior Minister R Ashoka against Siddaramaiah in the Varuna Assembly segment, while V Somanna would take on Shivakumar in Kanakapura.
Siddaramaiah and Kumaraswamy also dismissed reports that a section of MLAs of their parties were unhappy over their joining hands in government formation.
The cabinet expansion is on the cards for nearly two months ever since the BJP won the maximum number of seats in the December 5, 2019 bypolls and got a majority in the Karnataka assembly.
Addressing a meeting of party workers in Hassan on Monday, she said, her name will be officially declared soon.
Karnataka Water Resources Minister Ramesh Jarkiholi on Wednesday sent his resignation letter to Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa following allegations of sexual harassment against him.
The electoral fortunes of top leaders-- Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai of the BJP, Congress heavyweights Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar and JD-S' H D Kumaraswamy, among many others will be known on Saturday.
"Before January 15 next year, when the election will be one year away, we are planning to select candidates for at least 150 assembly constituencies, so that they can start working," Kumaraswamy told reporters.
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