Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said if the Congress comes to power in Karnataka, dynastic politics will be at an all-time high in the state and it will be 'afflicted with riots'.
'If delimitation is not handled well by the Centre, the southern states are certainly going to challenge it.'
With its age-old fascination for education, southern states have done better than the North. Start-ups, IT hubs, and industry majors setting up shop have changed the face of the South. Nearly 79% of global offices set up by international conglomerates in India are in the South. Almost 46% of tech unicorns are from the South. The GDP per person in the South is 4.2 times higher than the North. None of these indicators can be ignored by any central government, whatever the political compulsions, notes Ramesh Menon.
Ending a busy day of electioneering for the Bharatiya Janata Party in poll-bound Karnataka after back-to-back rallies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took part in a mega roadshow in north Bengaluru on Saturday drawing an enormous response from a huge crowd.
Actor Vijay, founder of the Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) party, has declared that his party will challenge the ruling DMK in the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections. In a general council meeting, Vijay criticized the DMK's dynasty politics, their handling of law and order, and women's safety. He also targeted the BJP-led central government over issues like the Waqf Bill, delimitation, and the three-language policy. Vijay promised his party's support to working classes, government employees, and vowed to oppose projects harmful to natural resources and agriculture. He assured 100% safety for women and strict law and order if TVK forms the government. The party passed resolutions opposing the Waqf Bill, delimitation, and the three-language policy, and also voiced support for the two-language policy, finding a permanent solution for fishermen's issues, and opposing the Parandur airport project.
The DMK leadership may now have to deal with a demand for more seats from its Congress ally in the Lok Sabha polls, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Peninsular Indians could ask 'Why should we contribute half of India's tax revenues if we account for only a quarter of the seats in the Lok Sabha?'.' 'The rest of the country seems likely to counter that 'democracy means one vote per person irrespective of where that person resides in India'.' 'With no easy answers to this thorny debate, the south's economic ascendancy could end up creating a Hobson's choice.' A revealing excerpt from Nandita Rajhansa and Saurabh Mukherjea's book, Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India.
'There will be no change of seats for Delhi, Assam and Maharashtra.' 'Andhra, J&K, Kerala, Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, West Bengal and Telangana will lose seats while there will be an increase for MP, UP, Bihar, Haryana, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh.' 'It is a big mistake if you make it a north-south issue.'
A Karnataka government circular on selecting students with knowledge of Hindi for a tour of Uttarakhand has sparked a 'Hindi imposition' row, with the government clarifying there was no such direction either from the state or the Centre on the matter.
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.
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.
'If such a practice were feasible, every state would seek additional funds, posing a significant risk to the overall health of the economy.'
EPS has had its way on most things, alliance-wise. A week earlier, he reiterated that he would not re-admit OPS and Sasikala Natarajan back in the party. It was a message not just to detractors in the AIADMK. It was even more so for the BJP leadership in Delhi. Even more important for the AIADMK was their demand for accepting EPS as the chief ministerial candidate of any alliance that the party would form, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Villpuram district in north Tamil Nadu continued to reel under unprecedented flooding on Monday following extremely heavy rainfall, virtually blocking access to villages and residential colonies as bridges and roads overflowed, inundating huge acreage of standing crops and leaving passengers stranded as rail and road traffic was hit.
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.
Faith and law clash at the powerful Ganeshwar Mutt in northern Karnataka as a spate of deaths, including that of the mutt head Sadguru Ganeshwar Avadhoota Swami, have raised eyebrows. Vicky Nanjappa reports
We have heard about some very bizarre superstitions that the candidates followed while filing their nominations for the upcoming Karnataka assembly elections.
Crops have failed, people don't have jobs and there is no drinking water. Vicky Nanjappa reports on the abysmal reality of drought-hit northern Karnataka
Officials in districts bordering Maharashtra have been asked to maintain contact with their counterparts there regarding the release of water from dams, following reports of heavy rains in the neighboring states.
An advertisement sign board of an astrologer will not have the symbolic hand for sometime or at least till the Karnataka elections are over.
Being caught surfing porn online is, perhaps, the most embarrassing moment in a lifetime. But how does one explain lawmakers caught in the act, that too in office?
Karnataka continues to reel under one of it worst floods in recent times. The death toll has crossed 200 and 25 lakh hectares of standing crop has been damaged, as per a report prepared by the state government.
Today, with the Lok Sabha polls only months away, any inter-state dispute over the Cauvery water dispute has the potential to take more political turns than otherwise, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
A team of the Gujarat police camping in Karnataka picked up two doctors -- Dr Saleem Ali and Dr Pathan -- from Bijapur, a town in northern Karnataka, on Sunday. Although police are yet to ascertain his role behind the two blasts, they say immediate information with them shows Dr Ali had provided logistic support to those who carried out the blasts.
A historic Cabinet meeting of the B S Yeddyurappa cabinet is underway in Gulbarga. A cabinet meeting is being held in Gulbarga in Northern Karnataka after 26 years.
The police have received information that Nasir visited key installations in northern Karnataka several times and was planning terror strikes in this area. He, along with his associates, was planning terror attacks on the nuclear power plant near Karwar and the INS Kadamba Naval base. Several maps with details of these crucial installations have been recovered from Nasir. The terrorists were reportedly targeting the smaller towns in Karnataka as security is often lax.
Adnan, an engineering graduate from Bijapur in northern Karnataka, made the costly mistake which helped the police track down the ten SIMI activists. Adnan was on the run ever since some of his accomplices were arrested in Karnataka last November.
The spotlight is on Hubli -- the commercial capital of northern Karnataka -- where a major terror module that was planning the assassinations of several high-profile personalities was recently busted. Five of the terror suspects arrested by the Bangalore police in connection with the plot are from Hubli.
The states and union territories where the elections are being held in this phase are Assam (4), Bihar (5), Chhattisgarh (7), Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu (2), Goa (2), Gujarat (25), Karnataka (14), Maharashtra (11), Madhya Pradesh (8), Uttar Pradesh (10) and West Bengal (4). The BJP has bagged the Surat seat unopposed.
Electorally, the yatra seems to have paid dividends in the south, but the march does not seem to be helping the Congress in stopping the BJP's surge in the Hindi-heartland states.
While Wadiyar, scion of the erstwhile Mysuru royal family, is making his political debut from the Mysore Lok Sabha segment, Lakshmana is state Congress spokesperson and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's confidant.
'Over the next 20 years, we would be adding almost 10 million people to the workforce every year!' 'And we won't be able to give employment to even 2 million out of the 10 million every year.' 'Don't forget, it keeps adding every year.'
Intense heat swept through east India and parts of the southern peninsular region on Thursday, testing power grids and prompting the Kerala government to order closure of educational institutions till May 6.
Thirty two-year-old Liyakath Ali Abdulgani Sayeed, who was working in London in a security agency, returned to Belgaum on March 18 this year after he lost his job. He was living in Belgaum with his wife and two children, who are British nationals. In his possession, the cops found a laptop, cell phones and a CD containing jihadi material. Further investigations are on and it is too early to come to any sort of conclusion, the police said.
Heart-breaking stories of sorrow and shock began emerging from various parts of Kerala as people learned about the death of their loved ones.
A round-up of the Ranji Trophy matches played on Saturday.
The war against corruption needs to be a three pronged attack: one that addresses personal frailties, rectifies systemic defects and roots out faulty leadership, says Vivek Gumaste.
The two main factions in Karnataka's Congress party -- one led by Siddaramaiah and the other by D K Shivakumar -- are both contenders for the chief ministership. Both groups have fought hard to get their choice of MLAs the party ticket, notes Aditi Phadnis.
Akshata Murty, the wife of Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, stands to earn Rs 68.17 crore in dividend income from her shareholding in India's second-largest IT firm Infosys. Murty, daughter of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy, held 3.89 crore shares of Infosys at the end of December, according to company filings with the stock exchanges. Infosys declared a final dividend of Rs 17.50 per share for FY23 (April 2022 to March 2023).
A voter turnout of 60.19 per cent was recorded till 5 pm in the third phase of Lok Sabha elections in 93 constituencies spread over 11 states and Union Territories on Tuesday with sporadic incidents of violence in West Bengal.
