Kharge's son-in-law emerges as front-runner for Gulbarga seat as Cong Prez focuses on national pitch
Bengaluru (PTI): M Mallikarjun Kharge's son-in-law Radhakrishna Doddamani has emerged as the front-runner for Congress ticket to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in the home turf of the party's President.
The 81-year-old Kharge had won from Gulbarga (Kalaburagi) Lok Sabha segment twice but lost the 2019 polls.
"The Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha's hands are full. In addition to managing party affairs at the national level, he has to coordinate with INDIA bloc partners", a senior party leader said.
"Also, he has four more years of his term left in Rajya Sabha", he said, seeking to confirm reports that Kharge is not in favour of contesting from Kalaburagi.
His son, Priyank Kharge, who represents Chittapur assembly constituency in Gulbarga segment and is a Minister in the Siddaramaiah cabinet in Karnataka, is also not interested to throw his hat in the ring.
"Doddamani, a businessman who also manages educational institutions, seems to be the front runner", a party leader said.
Party sources said the Congress President will take a final call on whether or not to contest the polls in consultation with top leaders including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
Kharge will have the final word on whether it is Doddamani or anyone else who would be the candidate from Gulbarga, as it is his home turf, the sources said.
Doddamani, who was initially reluctant to enter the fray, has been asked to be prepared to be fielded.
Born in Kalaburagi, Doddamani has maintained a low profile; he has always worked actively behind the scenes in managing and strategising for Kharge's successive electoral campaign. He is said to be popular among party workers and supporters, especially in the Gurmitkal Assembly segment, which Kharge represented consecutively between 1972 and 2004.
Congress' poll managers in Kalaburagi during a recent meeting with party legislators and leaders from the segment are said to have discussed Doddamani's probable candidacy, and about ensuring his victory.
Kharge was defeated by BJP's Umesh Jadhav by 95,452 votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Popularly known as "Solillada Saradara", (a leader without defeat), that was the first electoral loss in Kharge's political life spanning several decades.
Ahead of the polls, Jadhav had quit as Congress MLA and joined the BJP to contest the Lok Sabha election from Gulbarga.
The 2019 election was considered a tough one for Kharge, a nine-time MLA and two-term Lok Sabha member, as several senior leaders of Congress like Baburao Chinchansur, A B Malaka Reddy and Malikayya Guttedar, from the region had quit the party and joined BJP.
These leaders along with Jadhav, who had quit the Congress upset over the "dominance" of Kharge and his son Priyank Kharge (who was then Minister in the Congress-JD(S) coalition government) in the region, found a common ground and aggressively campaigned against the father-son duo.
Kharge, who was earlier leader of the Congress party in Lok Sabha, had served as Union Cabinet Minister- Labour and Employment, also Railways and Social Justice and Empowerment in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government.
He had also held various portfolios in successive Congress governments that governed the state and was also president of Karnataka Congress and leader of opposition in the state assembly.
Gulbarga for long had been a bastion of the Congress. Before 2019, it had lost its hold over the constituency only in 1996 and 1998 Lok Sabha polls when the Janata Dal and BJP had won the seat, respectively.
Gulbarga has eight assembly seats of which Congress currently holds six, and BJP and JD(S) one each.
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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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