'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
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.
The state is mainly witnessing a three-cornered contest between the ruling BJP, the Congress and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (Secular).
The Congress has consciously contested on a lesser number of seats in this Lok Sabha election as part of a strategy to keep the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) together and defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has said.
Congress legislators spent the whole night inside the Karnataka Legislative Assembly and Council, escalating demand for the dismissal of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister K S Eshwarappa over his statement regarding the national flag.
Kharge, who was popularly known as "solillada Saradara", (a leader without defeat) faced his first electoral loss in his political life spanning several decades against BJP's Umesh Jadhav in Gulbarga by a margin of 95,452 votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP holds 28 of the 59 Rajya Sabha seats that will soon face election.
The Congress has 40 MLAs while the BJP has 25 in the 68-member state assembly. The remaining three seats are held by independents.
Eshwarappa, who recently announced his retirement from electoral politics, also shared a video of him talking to Modi in a phone call.
Karnataka goes to polls in about a fortnight and the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress is going toe-to-toe to win the elections, results of which will be announced on May 15. Here's a simple guide to all things about the Karnataka polls.
Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa moved a motion seeking a vote of confidence in the legislative assembly at 1530 hours. The one line motion moved by Yeddyurappa requested the opposition to approve the motion without a debate. He requested that the vote of confidence be held immediately, but opposition Congress insisted that a debate be held before the vote of confidence takes place.
The Karnataka cabinet on Thursday decided to promulgate an ordinance to give effect to the contentious law against religious conversions.
Taking on the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Karnataka, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday charged that "bad governance" and "corruption" had slackened state's progress and a sense of insecurity was prevalent among the minorities.
According to some observers, the Congress gained ground by attracting votes from Telugu Desam Party sympathisers after the TDP opted out of the race due to its own reasons.
Siddaramaiah, who hails from the shepherd Kuruba caste, holds the record for presenting the highest number of Budgets in Karnataka -- 13 so far. He has often spoken about how he was mocked in 1994 before he presented his first Budget. 'Some people asked, "Can he count sheep?",' Siddaramaiah told a regional news channel.
If the party's members aren't sure what it stands for, see no path to wealth or power, and endure control by a dynasty, which, almighty as it is within the party, cannot get them the votes, they are likely to explore options, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Yatnal, who has launched a tirade against Yediyurappa and his family, especially after his second son BY Vijayendra was made the BJP state president, said there was large-scale corruption in coronavirus management during the BJP government.
This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
Vicky Nanjappa gives a lowdown on the Karnataka assembly election
Although the much-touted Yeddyurappa impact has managed to split the BJP votes in Karnataka, the newly-formed KJP has nothing to cheer about over its performance in polls, notes Vicky Nanjappa.
For the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka, the assembly elections are nothing short of an acid test.
'Both Modi and Shah know the importance attached by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita to self-introspection (swadhyay) as one of the virtues of wise leaders.' 'From the way both leaders are painting the BJP's performance in the Karnataka election, one can only conclude that they have flunked Lord Krishna's test,' says B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
Factors such as anti-incumbency, voter fatigue, and dissatisfaction among the youth contributed mainly to the poor showing of Bharat Rashtra Samithi in the Telangana legislative assembly election on Sunday.
When the Bharatiya Janata Party's Mukesh Dalal was declared elected unopposed to the Lok Sabha from Surat on Monday, he became the first candidate to achieve the feat from Gujarat since its formation 64 years ago though the erstwhile state of Saurashtra saw a similar instance in 1951.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Karnataka facing political crisis, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and newly-elected Vice President Rahul Gandhi held detailed discussions with former External Affairs Minister and senior party leader S M Krishna about the political scene ahead of the May assembly polls there.
If the Congress is contesting fewer seats than ever before, the BJP is set to contest its highest-ever number of Lok Sabha seats.
A crucial meeting of the Janata Dal-Secular legislature party is scheduled to commence at 0900 hours where a final call will be taken whether to support the BJP or not. JDS supreme H D Deve Gowda has been authorised by his party to take the final decision.
In the public eye, it seemed as though leaders were talking to each other in person or through the media. In reality, leaders refused to even see eye-to-eye and utilized the services of a mediator to do all the talking. What happened behind the scenes? How did the allies mend the fences? Rediff.com spoke to the official mediators of the JDS and the BJP to find out.
Amit Shah wants to increase the party's nationwide vote share by at least 10 per cent from the 37.7 per cent it secured five years ago and ensure above 50 per cent vote share in the states where it came close to that benchmark, but couldn't cross it.
The assault allegedly took place over playing Hanuman chalisa, a Hindu devotional hymn in praise of lord Hanuman, at a shop in central Bengaluru area.
The joint statement was issued by senior leaders of 13 opposition parties, including interim president of Congress Sonia Gandhi, the Nationalist Congress Party patriarch Sharad Pawar, and the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
"If the FSL (Forensic Science Laboratory) report proves that the slogan raised in favour of Pakistan is true, serious action will be taken in this regard. There is no question of protecting those who raised slogans in favour of Pakistan," the Chief Minister told reporters.
Karnataka Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar has been chosen to lead the Bharatiya Janata Party in the forthcoming Karnataka elections. Member of Parliament and senior BJP leader Prahlad Joshi informed reporters in Bangalore that Shettar would the leader of the party.
A committee was set up after the Bharatiya Janata Party's IT cell chief announced in a tweet the schedule for the Karnataka assembly polls before the official declaration on March 27.
Amid speculations of Operation Hasta' going on in Karnataka to woo Bharatiya Janata Party leaders to join the Congress, former BJP minister B C Patil and ex-MLA Narasimha Naik met Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar during the birthday party of noted Kannada film actor Sudeep Sanjeev, who is popularly known as Sudeep.
Asserting that the JD-S does not practice opportunistic politics, Gowda while defending the decision to ally with the BJP said, "This party has to be saved, which has been his pain and struggle for decades, and there is no selfishness in this....I took the decision."
In the last five years, 480 candidates with declared cases related to hate speech have contested elections to state assemblies, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, the ADR said.
In 2019, actor turned-politician Sumalatha Ambareesh, an independent backed by the BJP, won by defeating then Kumaraswamy's son and joint candidate of the then ruling Congress-JD-S alliance Nikhil by 1,25,876 votes.
Renewing his attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Karnataka, Governor H R Bhardwaj on Friday charged it with having 'failed' to check illegal mining and demanded that Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa reply to his recent letters on illegal mining and alleged land scams. "Illegal mining is still continuing. No action is taken by the government here," said Bhardwaj, who wrote to Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa two days ago seeking a report on the issue.
How many more years, how many more states, how many more campaigns, how many more candidates can he ask votes for, before he or the voters or both tire?, asks Krishna Prasad.
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