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2 weeks ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Gowhar Geelani |Vaishna Roy
A narrow lane abutting Sri Guru Singh Sabha, the largest gurdwara in Bengaluru, located on the periphery of Ulsoor Lake in central Bengaluru, leads to a dense warren of bylanes which are collectively known as M.V. Garden. In one of these minuscule bylanes, in mid-May, a knot of women surrounded Munishame Gowda holding aloft their Aadhaar cards, ration cards, and Scheduled Caste certificates.
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4 weeks ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Gowhar Geelani |Vaishna Roy
With the Union government announcing that caste will be recorded in the next—though significantly delayed—decennial Census, there is renewed focus on the status of Karnataka’s Socio-Economic and Educational Survey conducted in 2015, which also documented the respondents’ caste. States like Bihar and Telangana announced and swiftly conducted this exercise over the past year and also put out the findings in the public domain.
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1 month ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Divya Gandhi |Vaishna Roy
On January 8, six naxalites who were active in Karnataka surrendered in the presence of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. At the event, the Chief Minister announced that with this, Karnataka had become “naxal-free”. The last naxalite who remained active surrendered three weeks later, on February 1, reinforcing the government’s declaration that the armed struggle of the naxalites had ended in Karnataka after its four-decade-long journey since the 1980s.
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2 months ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Vaishna Roy
A well-known Kannada poet and writer who hails from Mudnakudu village of Chamarajanagar district in southern Karnataka, Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy is a prominent Dalit voice in the Kannada world of letters. His prodigious corpus of 50 books, which includes poetry collections, essay compilations, plays, and collections of short stories, has helped him carve a niche for himself.
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2 months ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Vaishna Roy
The ongoing debate over language policy in Tamil Nadu seems to be influencing Karnataka as well, where activists are pushing for a shift to the two-language model used in Tamil Nadu’s schools. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. K. Stalin’s resistance to the National Education Policy (NEP), which mandates teaching three languages, has ignited similar concerns in Karnataka.
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2 months ago | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy
A sensational YouTube video in Kannada has refocused attention on the unsolved rape and murder of 17-year-old Soujanya. The video, uploaded by content creator Sameer M.D. on his YouTube channel Dhootha (“Messenger”) on February 27, has gone viral in Karnataka, garnering over 1.8 crore views—an exceptionally high number in the Kannada YouTube sphere.
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Mar 8, 2025 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy
When Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar addressed a press conference in Bengaluru on February 26, he was a picture of confidence despite the rising clamour from some senior Congress leaders close to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah demanding his removal as president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC). Shivakumar had just returned from Delhi where he had gone to meet Union Jal Shakti Minister C.R. Patil.
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Mar 5, 2025 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Sharada Srinivasan |Vaishna Roy
Two days before the presentation of the State budget by Karnakata Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on March 7, members of the BJP in Karnataka protested the diversion of funds allocated for the welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
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Feb 22, 2025 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Vaishna Roy
Over the past week, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has been engaged in meetings with Ministers and various community leaders as part of pre-budget discussions leading up to the presentation of the Karnataka budget on March 7. As part of this series of consultations, he met a group of backward caste leaders on February 18, who demanded that the findings of the caste census conducted in the State 10 years ago be made public.
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Feb 20, 2025 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed |Vaishna Roy
Hyderabad-based filmmaker Pranav Pingle Reddy’s five-part, long-form, documentary Occupied (2020) was recently screened in Bengaluru as part of a citizen-led initiative to spark a discussion on the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Though the film was released five years ago, it remains relevant today, focusing on young Palestinian artists who resist the occupation of their land while celebrating their lives, loves, and hopes.
