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 Janata Dal-Secular demanded that the Congress government should sack Khan from the Cabinet for his racist slur.
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.
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.
Some explicit video clips allegedly involving Prajwal had started making the rounds in Hassan in recent days.
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.
Surprisingly, the BJP's nearest rival in ad spend was not the Congress, but the Bharat Rashtra Samithi.
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.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar supremo Sharad Pawar were among the famous faces who queued up at the polling booths on Tuesday to caste their votes in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
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.
'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.
Making it clear that the Bharatiya Janata Party is no mood to buckle under pressure from the Janata Dal-Secular, a senior BJP leader made it clear that he will not hold talks with JD-S supremo H D Deve Gowda.
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.
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.
According to state officials, the project envisages lifting of 17.40 thousand million cubic feet of water from river Thunga to Bhadra reservoir and 29.90 TMC from Bhadra reservoir.
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.
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.
This will be the first full-year Budget of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government since it came to power for a third consecutive term in July last year.
Reddy dared the saffron party to prove its claim that the Congress government in the southern state did not fulfil its poll guarantees.
From dubbing voices to putting faces with the help of AI, political campaigns are undergoing a Bollywood makeover. Among the favourites is a scene from the Anil Kapoor-starrer Nayak, posted by the BJP, where Kapoor asks about the Chunaavi Vaade (poll promise), with Arvind Kejriwal at the receiving end instead of Amrish Puri.
Both the BJP and the Congress have their share of challenges, with finding winning horses on top of this list.
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.
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.
Ahead of the Maharashtra assembly polls, Pangarkar joined the Shinde-led Shiv Sena on Friday in the presence of party leader and former state minister Arjun Khotkar.
The Karnataka high court on Monday stayed investigation against Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and others over alleged irregularities concerning the now scrapped electoral bond scheme.
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.
A boy's alleged remark that the Education Minister 'doesn't know Kannada', irked Madhu Bangarappa, who holds the portfolio, as he directed officials to take action against the student.
Senior BJP leaders, including Union ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh, asserted on Saturday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will complete his full term if elected to power, refuting the Aam Aadmi Party's claim that Modi wants Shah to succeed him after turning 75 next year.
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.
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.
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.
'Karnataka's finances are much healthier than the Union government's, which is indebted to nearly twice the extent of the state.'
Karnataka and Maharashtra have bickered over a disputed border for more than half a century.
The Congress on Tuesday suffered a major upset in Himachal Pradesh at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rajya Sabha elections which were marred by cross-voting in all the three states though it won three seats in Karnataka while the saffron party pocketed an extra seat in Uttar Pradesh.
With the Bihar government releasing the findings of its caste survey, pressure seems to be mounting on the Karnataka government, especially within the ruling Congress, to make the state's Socio-economic and Educational Census, popularly known as the 'caste census', public.
The Congress, by and large, focused on local issues in this election and its campaign also was run by state leaders initially.
Bypolls will be held on Wednesday in 31 assembly seats spread across 10 states and Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, from where Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is making her electoral debut. Though these bye-elections are not going to have any bearing on the governments, they are seen as a big test for the Congress and the INDIA bloc which failed to put up a united show in the recent Haryana assembly polls. Most of these seats fell vacant after the sitting MLAs contested the Lok Sabha elections and won while in some constituencies, the bypolls are being held due to death of the representatives. The Wayanad seat was vacated by Rahul Gandhi, who also won from the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency which he kept. Voting will be held in seven seats in Rajasthan, six in West Bengal, five in Assam, four seats in Bihar, three in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala and Meghalaya. Votes will be counted on November 23.
Kumaraswamy reiterated his desire to be the Agriculture Minister.
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