City: Bengaluru

  HC notice to BBMP on white-topping Karnataka High Court has issued a notice to Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on a PIL opposing the white-topping of South End Road, from Madhavan Park to Nettakallappa Circle via Nagasandra Circle. The order was passed by a Division Bench comprising acting Chief Justice L Narayana Swamy and Justice P S Dinesh Kumar. The PIL had been filed by A C Chandrashekar Raju and seven other residents of Basavanagudi. They had pleaded that white-topping of roads was being done unscientifically, and that the BBMP had not worked out a scientific mechanism for laying…

Potential MP Avare, Namaskara. I’m Sameer Shisodia, living in Bellandur (recently referred to as Outer Koramangala by an ambitious builder!). I have been living in Bengaluru for 23 years, love the city and what it represents, crave the bisibele bath and the coffee when travelling elsewhere, speak a fair bit of Kannada and am learning more. I have also voted several times for local, state and national elections. I have been involved in some community-led efforts for the lake and traffic around here - not as much as I’d like to and not close to what many in my community…

Bangalore Central is a rather new Lok Sabha constituency carved out in 2008, as part of 'delimitation'. It was created out of the former Bangalore North and Bangalore South Lok Sabha constituencies. Bangalore Central comprises eight assembly constituencies - Rajajinagar, Chamrajpet, Gandhinagar, Shivajinagar, Shantinagar, Sarvagnanagar, CV Raman Nagar and Mahadevpaura. In the 2018 assembly election, Congress had won five of these constituencies - Sarvagnanagar, Shivajinagar, Shanthinagar, Gandhinagar and Chamarajpet. BJP had won the other three - CV Raman Nagar, Rajajinagar and Mahadevapura. This was a step up for the Congress, which had won only four seats in the 2013 assembly…

Vatal Nagaraj, known for his hardline pro-Kannada stand, is contesting from Bangalore South constituency this election. Nagaraj is contesting in the ticket of his party, the Kannada Chalavali Vatal Paksha. Hailing from Vatala in Mysore district, Nagaraj had started his political career in Bengaluru as a corporator in 1964. He had been elected thrice as MLA from the Chamarajanagar assembly constituency, in 1989, 1994 and 2004. He had contested in the 2009 Lok Sabha election from Bangalore South constituency itself, but had lost to sitting MP Ananth Kumar. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Nagaraj had supported Congress candidates. Nagaraj…

Krishna Byre Gowda, Karnakata's Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR), is the Congress candidate from Bangalore North parliamentary constituency. Gowda, a second-generation politician, was first elected to the state Assembly in 2003, and was one of its youngest members at the age of 30. He was elected from Vemagal, which had fallen vacant after the death of his father Byre Gowda, a five-time MLA from the constituency. Gowda joined the Congress in 2004, and won the constituency again. In 2007, he was elected the President of the Karnataka Youth Congress Committee. In 2008, he contested and won from…

Bangalore North (parliamentary constituency number 24) comprises eight assembly constituencies - KR Pura, Byatarayanapura, Yeshwanthapura, Dasarahalli, Mahalakshmi Layout, Malleshwaram, Hebbal and Pulakeshinagar. Till 2004, this constituency was the stronghold of the Congress. C K Jaffer Sharief of INC had been elected from here to the Lok Sabha seven times (1977-1996 and 1998-2004), and Kengal Hanumanthaiya thrice before him (1962-1977). But since 2004, in the past three elections, BJP has won from here. Bangalore North was one of the nine constituencies in Mysore state in 1951, when the first general elections were held in India. N Keshava Iyengar from the INC…

Actor and film personality Prakash Raj is contesting from Bangalore Central constituency as an independent candidate. He will be facing two-term BJP MP P C Mohan, Congress candidate and MLC Rizwan Arshad, and 19 other candidates. Prakash Raj grew up in Shanthi Nagar, near the centre of the city. Alongside a long career in theatre and films, he had also been involved in social service, having adopted villages and schools. Prakash says he now wants to be the “catalyst of change for a larger section of society than just the one-off village or school.” While he is no stranger to…

Bangalore South comprises eight assembly constituencies - Basavanagudi, Bommanahalli, BTM Layout, Chickpet, Govindarajanagar, Jayanagar, Padmanabhanagar and Vijayanagar. The constituency is considered largely conservative and traditional, more so areas like Jayanagar and Basavanagudi. But it also has a fairly large migrant population, many of whom work in the city’s IT sector, in areas like BTM Layout and Bommanahalli. The constituency has been a BJP stronghold for long. Find which wards comes under the Bangalore South parliamentary constituency. According to the website of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Karnataka, as of 16th January, the constituency had 21,66,445 voters - 11,29,388 male, 10,36,718…

Senior politician and Rajya Sabha MP B K Hari Prasad is the Congress candidate for Bangalore South. He was considered a surprise candidate in the constituency where BJP was expected to field Tejaswini Ananth, wife of late MP Ananth Kumar. However, instead of Tejaswini, BJP has also fielded a surprise candidate, 28-year-old Tejasvi Surya, here. A resident of Malleshwaram, Hari Prasad has been a member of the Rajya Sabha four times - 1990-1996, 2004-2010, 2013-2014 (elected after Anil Lad of INC resigned, to take charge as Bellary MLA), and 2014-present. In 1999, Hari Prasad had contested from Bangalore South against…

Tejasvi Surya, contesting on a BJP ticket from Bangalore South constituency, is one of the youngest candidates this election. Surya, 28, is a practising lawyer at the Karnataka High Court, and has been associated with the BJP and RSS for long. He is currently the State Secretary of Yuva Morcha, BJP’s youth wing. Surya is a spokesperson for the BJP, and also part of its national social media team. He is also the nephew of Ravi Subramanya, the BJP MLA from Basavanagudi. Surya has co-founded the Centre for Entrepreneurial Excellence, an organisation that runs projects related to education and entrepreneurship.…