Politics

Congress feels in-house heat over ticket promise to party hoppers

Published

1 week ago

March 14, 2023

With party-hopping gaining speed in poll-bound Karnataka, resistance is building up in Congress on admitting BJP MLAs with the promise of a party ticket to contest the assembly polls due by May.In one instance, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president DK Shivakumar had to intervene to quell rebellion in KR Pet in Mandya district after the local unit protested BJP minister KC Narayana Gowda’s reported entry. Gowda is among more than a dozen MLAs who pulled down Congress-JDS coalition government in 2019 by switching over to BJP and contesting bypolls from the new party.

While Gowda is more or less certain to contest on a Congress ticket, speculation is rife that minister V Somanna is also set to leave BJP, but as per people in the know his move will depend on the constituency Congress will offer.

With Congress leader Siddaramaiah eyeing the CM’s post for a second time, some of his loyalists may return if he invites them back, said the people.Both BJP and Congress are unsure how many MLAs will switch sides. This is also one of the reasons Congress is taking time to release its first list of candidates.

KPCC communications cell chief Priyank Kharge told ET last week that his party was expecting 8-10 strong leaders, including MLAs, to come from BJP.

Somanna had skipped BJP chief JP Nadda’s event on March 1 in Chamarajanagar, the district he is in charge of. He has been nursing a grouse that BJP has sidelined him though he is the only MLA from the Lingayat community in Bengaluru. As per people in the know, he will join Congress if it offers him a constituency with substantial Lingayat voters. But KPCC working chief Eshwar Khandre has opposed his induction. CM Basavaraj Bommai said on Monday he was confident the senior leader would remain in BJP.Former BJP member Puttanna has joined Congress after resigning as MLC. He plans to contest from Rajajinagar, triggering protests from Congress aspirants. At Arasikere in Hassan district, JDS MLA KM Shivalinge Gowda has said he will contest from Congress.

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Politics

Amid Third Front buzz, Mamata Banerjee to meet Naveen Patnaik tomorrow

Published

9 hours ago

March 22, 2023

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will meet her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik in Bhubaneswar on March 23 amid discussions on the formation of a Third Front ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.Though Banerjee prefers to call the meeting “a courtesy call”, as she will visit Puri on Wednesday after reaching Bhubaneswar on Tuesday, Trinamool insiders believe that a discussion on an alliance of regional parties is also expected. Patnaik, ahead of the assembly polls in the state, is maintaining equidistance with both the Congress and BJP, like the Trinamool Congress.

To take the discussion on the Third Front ahead, former Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy will meet Banerjee at her residence on March 24, Banerjee said ahead of her visit to Odisha. Trinamool leadership has made it clear that the party will keep an equidistant stand from both BJP and Congress and Banerjee will reach out to other like-minded parties.

“The regional parties are very competent. Whenever regional parties meet, we discuss the federal structure of the country and various other issues. The central government creates policies while the implementing authority is the state,” Banerjee said.Recently, Banerjee held discussions with Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav, during SP’s two-day national executive meeting in Kolkata last weekend. Yadav had met Banerjee at her residence and discussed strategies for the coming Lok Sabha polls.

Yadav had said that ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the regional parties are trying to create an alliance or Front and Banerjee is working towards it. Telangana CM KCR and the Bihar CM are also proactive about the alliance of regional parties, Yadav had said.

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Politics

Accusing ED of ‘spreading lies’, BRS leader Kavitha Kalvakuntla offers to submit mobiles

Published

10 hours ago

March 21, 2023

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Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader Kavitha Kalvakuntla on Tuesday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for her third round of questioning in connection with the Delhi government’s now-scrapped excise policy.Before entering the ED office on Tuesday, Kalvakuntla, the daughter of Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, flashed some mobile phones kept in a transparent sheet to the media and said she was going to submit them to the ED.

She also wrote a letter to the federal agency stating that “these phones are submitted without prejudice to my right and contentions and larger contentions whether a woman’s phone can be intruded, in the teeth of her right to privacy”.

She further alleged “glaring act of malice on the part of the agency when it has chosen to make insinuations” against her in its first charge sheet filed last year in which the ED alleged that certain phones (allegedly used by her) were destroyed.

Responding to this charge, she has said: “It is baffling to note as to how, why and under what such circumstances agency made such allegations when I was not even summoned or asked any questions whatsoever.”

She said the accusations against her were “not only mala fide, misconceive but also prejudicial”. The BRS leader said she was submitting the phones to dispel any notion or adverse impression that the agency was allegedly trying to create.According to the letter, “deliberate leakage of the false accusation (by the ED) to the public has led to a political slugfest” wherein her political adversaries have been “flaunting the accusations, to accuse her of destroying the so-called evidence and causing great harm to her reputation and attempting to defame her and her political party”.Her letter added: “It is unfortunate that a premier agency like the Enforcement Directorate is becoming privy and party to these acts and sabotaging and sacrificing its sacrosanct duty of free and fair investigation at the altar of vested political interest”.

The BRS leader was questioned for over nine hours during her second round of questioning on Monday. She has challenged the ED summons in the Supreme Court. Her petition is slated to come up for hearing on March 24.

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