Tumkur Lok Sabha seat may not be a cakewalk for Deve Gowda
Bengaluru, Mar 25: A tough battle appears to be on the cards for JDS patriarch H D Deve Gowda in Tumkur Lok Sabha constituency as he is contesting from a Congress bastion amid disquiet in both his party and ally Congress over allocation of seats and tickets, say analysts.
They, however, do acknowledge the former prime minister's potential to bounce back as he did by winning the Kanakapura byelection in 2002 after he had lost to G Puttaswamy Gowda of Congress in 1999 from Hassan.
Though Tumakuru was allotted to JDS under the electoral arrangement between allies Congress and JD(S), sitting Congress MP S P Muddahanume Gowda has filed his papers from the seat, making it clear that Deve Gowda may not have an easy going.
It remains to be seen if MuddahanumeGowda remains in the contest but on Monday he appeared firm on giving a fight. "I'm filing my nomination as the Congress candidate. I'm not filing the nomination for fun," he said
According to reports, K N Rajanna, another Congress leader and former MLA, has also filed his nomination on Monday from Tumkur as an independent candidate.
The Congress and BJP candidates have won ten and four times from the same constituency. It was a Congress stronghold from 1952 to 1989, till it lost ground to the BJP.
G S Basavaraj is the BJP candidate. He had won three times before on Congress ticket and once on BJP ticket. He was defeated by Muddahanume Gowda in 2014 elections.
"Deve Gowda faces a tough fight in Tumkur. There is already disquiet in Janata Dal (Secular) about how the family is being given importance.
"Defeat of Anita Kumaraswamy (daughter-in-law of Deve Gowda) twice from Ramnagar constituency is quite fresh in people's minds," political analyst Sandeep Shastri told PTI here.
The Vokkaliga leader has fielded his grandsons Nikhil K and Prajwal Revanna from Mandya and Hassan respectively. This has apparently left some of the senior JDS leaders, who were hopeful of getting tickets, unhappy.
Ticket denial by Congress to Muddahanume Gowda has created some discontentment within local Congress leadership. Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara, who is a prominent leader from Tumkur, had met Deve Gowda and requested him to return the seat to Congress if he was not contesting from the constituency.
A section of local Congress leaders fears that giving Deve Gowda a chance to contest from Tumkuru would be like giving their bastion on a platter to JDS.
Harish Ramaswamy, political science professor at Karnatak University (Dharwad) and Shastri do not deny Deve Gowda's capability to bounce back as he had done earlier.
"Deve Gowda has all the capacity to bounce back. If you remember he had lost Kanakapura Lok Sabha seat in 1999 to G Puttaswamy of the Congress, but bounced back by winning the same seat in 2002 byelection. Deve Gowda could register a win in Congress backyard Kanakapura because he is a charismatic leader," he said.
Ramaswamy said the Congress had been pushing for Deve Gowda to contest from Bengaluru North constituency, but Deve Gowda opted for Tumakuru, may be because of the presence of more MLAs from JDS than Congress in the constituency, Ramaswamy said.
"In Bengaluru North, the Congress and the JDS have five and two MLAs respectively, but the Congress holds just one Assembly segment in Tumkur and JDS three. Deve Gowda could have considered this point before making the decision to contest from Tumkuru," he said.
Moreover, Deve Gowda would have been wary of the earlier defeat in Kanakapura as some parts of it now form the Bengaluru North constituency, Ramaswamy argued.
Also, the JDS think tank feels people would prefer Deve Gowda over Muddahanume Gowda, as the former prime minister is a more prominent Vokkaliga leader, he said.
"Deve Gowda is also known for playing emotional card to woo people," Ramaswamy said.
Tumkur district comes under the Old Mysore region. The JDS has not won an MP seat from there, but C N Bhaskarappa had won in 1996 as undivided Janata Dal candidate.
Tumakuru constituency, a dryland region, is spread over 6,706 sq.km. It had 15,94,703 registered voters - 7,97,512 males and 7,97,191 females - till January 2019.
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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