Polling is underway to elect 119 members of the Telangana Legislative Assembly, with voters queuing up to exercise their franchise amid tight security on Thursday.
K Siddaramaiah, who took over as the 22nd chief minister of Karnataka on Monday, is all set to face a stormy legislative assembly session. Among the several decisions that he took after being sworn-in was to reverse the previous Bharatiya Janata Party government's decision banning cow slaughter in the state.
Extending its winning run in the south, the Congress on Sunday won 64 assembly seats to form government in the Bharat Rashtra Samiti-dominated Telangana, with the southern solace coming in the midst of a saffron sweep of the Hindi heartland where the Bharatiya Janata Party wrested two states from the grand old party and retained one.
With the Biju Janata Dal backing the National Democratic Alliance's presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu, the vote share of the ruling dispensation has now crossed 50 percent, virtually paving the way for her election as the first tribal President and the youngest too.
Ignoring the recommendation of the state unit to field Vijayendra for the June 3 biennial elections to seven seats of Karnataka Legislative Council, the party central leadership on Tuesday announced names of four candidates, hours before the deadline for filing of nominations ended.
Former BJP union Minister Taradevi Siddartha, former Kannada Paksha MP S B Sidnal and former Janata Parivar Karnataka Assembly Legislator Jayaprakash Hegde on Tuesday joined the Congress in the presence of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President Mallikarjun Kharge. Speaking to newspersons, Kharge said Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has approved their induction into the party.
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.
Nagaraj reached Mumbai accompanied by Karnataka BJP president B S Yeddyurappa's personal assistant Santosh and BJP MLA R Ashok.
Terming the registration of FIR against Home Minister R R Patil by Karnataka police as "wrong", Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Monday said he would speak to his counterpart from the neighbouring state and request him to drop the charges.
Congress and RJD are single largest parties in Goa and Bihar respectively.
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.
Facing fresh trouble after the Supreme Court ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into his alleged role in illegal mining, former Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa on Saturday held consultations with his loyalists on his political future.
To the Karnataka strongman's shock, his staunchest followers did a U-turn and decided to stay back in the BJP, says Vicky Nanjappa
K Siddaramaiah, who led the Congress to victory in the May 5 assembly elections in Karnataka, took oath as the state's 22nd chief minister on Monday.
Asserting he will abide by rules, the speaker said he will take a "just decision which may be of convenience to some and inconvenience to some."
Ignoring JD-S' request for support, the Congress did not withdraw its second candidate Khan from the fray and issued a whip to all its MLAs asking them to vote for the party's candidates.
The coming weeks are sure to have a lot of drama unfolding in Maharashtra, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The police which are probing the matter on Bommai's instruction had arrested B R Naidu, the former chief of Congress' Karnataka unit social media team, on Wednesday night from his residence.
The legislature reiterated the state's stand that the issue is a settled one, and not an inch of land will be given to the neighbouring State.
In a startling repeat of the manoeuvres made by Bharatiya Janata Party members of Legislative Assembly in Karnataka to unseat the government of former Chief Minister Sadanand Gowda, over 40 Maharashtra Congress legislators raised a similar demand against Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Tuesday, saying he needed to go if he couldn't alter his way of functioning.
10 reasons why the Congress-JD-S government is on the brink of collapse.
Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge on Friday said that the Congress government will try to implement the five poll guarantees as soon as possible, but there will be certain 'rules and regulations'.
The Andhra Pradesh Anti-Corruption Bureau on Monday filed a chargesheet against suspended judge T Pattabhirama Rao and seven others, including two Karnataka members of legislative Assembly, in the cash-for-bail case involving former Karnataka minister Gali Janardhan Reddy.
The Karnataka government has suspended 40 officials and staff and issued show-cause notices to 257 who have been named by Lokayukta reports in illegal mining in Karnataka, Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar said.
While former minister and MLA Aravind Limbavali's wife Manjula Arvind Limbavali has got the ticket for the Mahadevapura constituency, the party has fielded Katta Jagadish, son of former minister Katta Subramanya Naidu from Hebbal.
Housing Minister M T B Nagaraj and K Sudhakar handed over their resignations at the Speaker's chamber in Vidhana Soudha.
The party has not applied the "one-family, one-ticket" formula for the Karnataka polls which it followed in the Punjab polls held last year.
Former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa has called for a meeting of his loyalists to review their decision on whether to topple the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in Karnataka. The meeting -- slated to be held at his Dollar's Colony residence in Bangalore at 10.30 am on Saturday -- will have 30 Bharatiya Janata Party Members of Legislative Assembly and seven ministers attending it.
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 Bharatiya Janata Party-led Karnataka government's move to send nearly 100 Members of Legislative Assembly abroad on a 'study tour' has come under flak from B S Yeddyurappa, who demanded that the programme be cancelled in view of severe drought conditions prevailing in large parts of the state.
In true Karnataka political style, which cuts across parties and loyalties, any reinstatement of Yeddiyurappa, even with adequate legislative majority, could trigger rebellion from within, which could embarrass the Modi-Shah duo than any other development elsewhere in the country, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Loyalists of former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa have made another attempt to resign from the Bharatiya Janata Party unit in the state. This time, they have emailed their resignations to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. Fourteen BJP legislators had made an attempt to put in their papers on Wednesday but failed to do so as the Speaker was not available.
Somshekhar Reddy, Karnataka Member of Legislative Assembly from Bellary, has been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with the cash-for-bail scam. According to the other arrested accused in the case, it was Reddy who passed on the money which was used to bribe those judges who eventually granted bail to his brother Janardhan Reddy, in a case connected to illegal mining.
Speaking to reporters in Mysuru, he said, he is not giving priority to such things and was concentrating on strengthening the party.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will consider whether the pleas challenging the validity of the electoral bond scheme for political funding of parties can be referred to a Constitution bench for an "authoritative pronouncement".
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.
The 52-year-old Congress leader reached Surat in the afternoon via a scheduled commercial flight along with sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and proceeded to the sessions court.
Even as Karnataka continues to release water to Tamil Nadu as per the directive of the Cauvery River Waters Authority, all the members of Legislative Assembly from the Janata Dal-Secular have tendered their resignations against this move by the Karnataka government.
Congress' good show was a "Janata Janardhana Victory", he said, crediting the people for the party's apparent return to power as it established a clear lead ahead of its rival BJP.
'This means the remedy will be worse than the disease. The thing which you want to avoid will happen.'
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