Former Karnataka Chief Minister and Janata Dal-Secular leader H D Kumaraswamy on Wednesday appeared to be warming up to the Bharatiya Janata Party, saying that "a new chapter has to begin to control looters" as he targeted the Congress government alleging corruption.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'BJP was always there in my blood, but due to some reasons I had gone out, but today I feel I have come back to my mother's lap. Looking at my brothers here, I don't feel like I'm coming back to the BJP office after 13 years'
Setting the mood for the assembly elections in Karnataka due next year, former Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday exhorted party leaders in the state to work together, as he set an ambitious target to win a minimum of 150 seats.
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.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party set for an impressive win in the Karnataka assembly poll, its leaders described the victory as an endorsement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's development agenda and claimed that people have rejected divisive, toxic and negative agenda of the Congress.
Karnataka and Maharashtra have bickered over a disputed border for more than half a century.
'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.
With Karnataka starting release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu in compliance with the directives of the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA), protests have erupted in southern parts of the State.
Kamal has a crisp pen when it comes to writing short and yet powerful film dialogues. But while speaking ex tempore -- and that has been his style -- he looks every bit a confused man, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi intensified his attack on the Election Commission, accusing them of 'vote chori' and warning of action if the INDIA bloc forms the government. He alleged a 'new special package' for Bihar, named SIR (Special Intensive Revision), is a 'new form of vote theft'.
The accusation comes a day after the President's secretariat forwarded the assertions of the Opposition BJP that Delhi was facing a constitutional crisis to the ministry of home affairs for "proper attention".
Seemingly expressing his displeasure against ministers demanding three more deputy chief minister posts in Karnataka, state Congress president D K Shivakumar on Tuesday said the party would respond to them appropriately.
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.
In controversial remarks, Maharashtra Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar on Monday said terrorists have no caste or religion and questioned veracity of the claim that terrorists asked about faith of tourists before killing them in Kashmir's Pahalgam town last week.
Jagdeep Dhankhar's sudden resignation as Vice President has led to speculation about underlying political tensions and disagreements with the ruling alliance.
'Karnataka's finances are much healthier than the Union government's, which is indebted to nearly twice the extent of the state.'
An expert committee in Karnataka has concluded that there is no association between premature cardiovascular disease and a prior history of Covid-19 infection or Covid vaccination. The report suggests that common risk factors like hypertension, diabetes, and smoking are more likely causes.
The Congress on Monday distanced itself from the controversial comments of some of its leaders on the Pahalgam terror attack, saying that only the recent CWC resolution and the views expressed by AICC chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and authorised AICC office-bearers represent its position. The opposition party's assertion comes in the wake of remarks by leaders like Vijay Wadettiwar, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Shashi Tharoor, Tariq Hameed Karra and Saifuddin Soz that have triggered a row, with the BJP alleging that some from the opposition party were speaking "Pakistan's language".
The government also termed the alleged insult to the farmer as an infringement on "dignity and self-respect", and said it cannot be tolerated.
The Congress, by and large, focused on local issues in this election and its campaign also was run by state leaders initially.
Modi said what is the meaning of its guarantees when that party's warranty itself has expired.
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.
This negated the gain of more than a dozen seats in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala.
The Bharat Mata controversy in Kerala shows how political and symbolic fights between the state and the Centre have taken attention away from education, throwing the state's oldest university into confusion and disorder, observes Shyam G Menon.
'Destabilising the Yediyurappa government is not a cakewalk.' 'If he is destabilised, then the BJP will have problems in Karnataka.'
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 launch of a new party by former Karnataka minister and mining baron G Janardhana Reddy has spiced up the poll scene in parts of state.
Addressing the party cadre in Bengaluru, Shivakumar said, "We got 135 plus seats in the assembly elections, but I am not happy, don't come to my or Siddaramaiah's house. Our next target is the Lok Sabha elections and we must fight well."
Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Saturday alleged that the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections were a 'blueprint for rigging democracy' and this 'match-fixing' would next happen in Bihar and 'anywhere the Bharatiya Janata Party is losing'.
The BJP also went on to label Kaul a "Pakistani sympathiser" and posted headings of a couple of her writings on X.
Lingayats are said to constitute about 17 per cent of Karnataka's population, and the community has dominance in as many as 100 out of total 224 constituencies, majority of these seats being in north Karnataka region.
The Allahabad High Court's Lucknow bench has disposed of a petition challenging Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's Indian citizenship, allowing the petitioner to explore other legal options. The court stated that since the central government couldn't provide a timeframe for resolving the petitioner's complaint, there was no reason to keep the petition pending.
Surprisingly, the BJP's nearest rival in ad spend was not the Congress, but the Bharat Rashtra Samithi.
'Hindu voters in coastal Karnataka lean more towards Hindutva than Hinduism which explains why the Siddaramaiah government's perception as anti-Hindu worked wonders for the BJP in coastal Karnataka.'
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.
