The 76-year-old had been out of active politics after undergoing a brain operation in London in 2003.
Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka, D K Shivakumar, responding to several media queries regarding the current 'internal conflict' in Karnataka Congress in reference to the chief ministerial position, said on Tuesday that he doesn't want to embarrass or weaken the party.
Going by political tradition, another formation will likely come to power in Karnataka in the next assembly election, due 2028. And if that happens, Mr Shivakumar will have to sit it out till 2033, points out Aditi Phadnis.
Women politicians bring to politics and policy a sensitivity that most of their male counterparts, at least until a generation back, lacked.
A renewed energy seems to have been infused into the 75-year old Congress leader Siddaramaiah's gait as he walked to address a packed press conference in Mysore on Saturday.
The BJP and Congress have already launched spirited campaigns for the elections.
Gianiji had crafted his moves with the meticulous planning of a chess grandmaster. He did not know whether a checkmate was feasible, as his time was running out, but he wanted Rajiv Gandhi to smell the fear of loss. A fascinating excerpt from K C Singh's The Indian President: An Insider's Account of the Zail Singh Years.
Karnataka and Maharashtra have bickered over a disputed border for more than half a century.
Sniping at the BJP senior leadership has reached a new high in Karnataka. For the moment, there is a truce, but the party knows the damage it could do ahead of the polls.
Mamatha Nichani speaks about her political ambitions, her thoughts on the political scenario and her decision to join the Congress, a party which her father, Ramakrishna Hegde, had opposed all his life.
M D Riti recalls her first encounter with Karnataka's next chief minister.
Karnataka Governor T N Chaturvedi and Kannada thespian Rajkumar were among those who came.
Among the mourners were several state leaders many of who were his protégés.
According to state government sources, not only did the governor insert some corrections, but he also initialled the final draft after those corrections had been made, reveals N Sathiya Moorthy.
As the 2019 Lok Sabha election approaches, some rare photographs from the 1996 election campaign, which saw a Bharatiya Janata Party prime minister for the first time in India's history, albeit only for 13 days.
The ultimate consequences of Rahul Gandhi's yatra may be known only in 2024, points out Dr Sudhir Bisht.
'Somewhere in the midst of the three milestones of 1881, 1984 and 1999 are the clues that provide the answer to the troubling corrosion of Karnataka politics: The disappearance of values, the criminalisation of politics, and the complete collapse of ideology,' says Krishna Prasad, former editor-in-chief, Outlook.
Union minister files a case against Rajasthan officials, alleges that audio recordings of tapped phone conversations has tarnished his reputation and disturbed his mental peace.
'Bommai's predicament is pathetic right now because deep inside he is not like this, but to remain in power he has to talk and speak against his own conscience.'
The Congress's master strategist is so incredibly popular and resourceful that even Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa regretted his arrest. That's the secret of D K Shivakumar's success, says Aditi Phadnis.
Even as politics engaged him more, he never hid his way of life. On one occasion, Morarji Desai pleaded with him to stop drinking publicly. "You stick to your pissky and I'll stick to my whisky'' he is supposed to have told him.
Interestingly, so far Deve Gowda's JD-S is not the target of the attack by the BJP. Come mid-May, he hopes he will once again play the role he has played before.
'The BJP had no traction in Karnataka and Siddaramaiah would have scraped through if he had not done all that he did.' 'When you pander to one community, the other community gets irritated.' 'Then, when you make fun of the cow and the treating of the cow as sacred, in your effort to belittle the Sangh Parivar and its obscurantism, you are hurting your normal voters too.' 'It is okay to make fun of the Sangh Parivar, but it is not okay to make fun of all Hindus.'
'The Congress-JD-S alliance will be intact for the next three years, for sure.'
'George was a politician with a difference. He had the ability to stand alone, take a position, however extreme, and sustain that position,' remembers Arun Jaitley.
On the 40th anniversary of the beginning of one of the darkest periods in our history, here are six painful facts about the Emergency.
29 years ago, Karnataka was hurled into a huge political crisis after MLAs withdrew support to S R Bommai's Janata Dal ministry. As the governor recommended that the chief minister be dismissed and President's Rule imposed in the state, then President R Venkataraman disagreed with Rajiv Gandhi's Cabinet and argued that 'the question whether a ministry commanded the confidence of the assembly should be tested in the House and not by the governor.' A fascinating excerpt from President Venkataraman's My Presidential Years, published with the kind permission of the publishers HarperCollins India.
'Who's providing all this money to the BJP? And who's providing all this money to the Congress?' 'Where did all this money come from?' 'Who is enabling all these MLAs to be bought for Rs 50, 60 crores?' 'There's one MLA on whose behalf somebody claimed that the BJP invited him for Rs 60 crores. Whose money is this?'
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