Haradanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda or Devegowda is an Indian politician who served as the Prime Minister of India from 1 June 1996 to 21 April 1997. He was previously the 14th Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1994 to 1996. He presently is a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha representing Karnataka. He is the national president of the Janata Dal (Secular) party. Born in a farming family, he joined the Indian National Congress party in 1953, and remained a member until 1962. He was imprisoned during the Emergency. He became President of the state unit of Janata Dal in 1994, and was considered to be a driving force in the party's victory in Karnataka. He served as the 8th Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1994 to 1996. In the 1996 general elections, no party won enough seats to form a government. When the United Front, a coalition of regional parties, formed the central government with the support of the Congress, Deve Gowda was unexpectedly chosen to head the government after V. P. Singh and Jyoti Basu declined the post and he was elected Prime Minister. During his tenure as prime minister, he also served as Home Minister for some time. His prime ministerial tenure lasted for less than a year. After his prime ministerial tenure, he was elected to the 12th (1998), 14th (2004), 15th, and 16th Lok Sabha, as Member of Parliament for the Hassan Lok Sabha constituency. He lost Lok Sabha elections in 2019 from Tumkuru but has been elected to Rajya Sabha since.
The Rashtriya Janata Dal is an Indian political party, mainly based in the state of Bihar. The party was founded in 1997 by Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Sikander Bakht was an Indian politician belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who served as the 15th governor of Kerala from 2002 until his death. He was elected as the Vice President of the BJP, served as its leader in the Rajya Sabha, and as a cabinet minister in the NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In 2000, he was awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian honour of the Government of India.
Indian Union Muslim League is a political party primarily based in Kerala. It is recognised as a State Party in Kerala by the Election Commission of India.
Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna was an Indian politician who served as Minister of External Affairs of India from 2009 to October 2012. He was the 10th Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1999 to 2004 and the 19th Governor of Maharashtra from 2004 to 2008. SM Krishna had served as the Speaker of the Karnataka Vidhana Soudha from December 1989 to January 1993. He was also a member of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha at various times from 1971 to 2014. He is widely credited with putting Bengaluru on the world map by building the foundation for making it the IT Hub that it is today during his tenure as Chief Minister. In 2023, Krishna was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award of India.
Ramakrishna Mahabaleshwar Hegde was an Indian politician who served as the third Chief Minister of Karnataka for three terms between 1983 and 1988. He was elected to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly in 1957, 1962, 1967, 1983, 1985 and 1989, and to the Rajya Sabha for two terms, 1978–83 and 1996–2002. He also served as Minister of Commerce and Industry in the Union government (1998–1999).
Hansraj Bhardwaj was an Indian politician who was Governor of Karnataka from 2009 to 2014; he also served as Governor of Kerala from 2012 until 2013. He was a member of the Indian National Congress. He holds the record of having the second longest tenure in Law Ministry since independence, after Ashoke Kumar Sen. He was the minister of state for nine years and a cabinet minister for law and justice for five years. At the end of his five-year term in 2014, Governor of Tamil Nadu, former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Konijeti Rosaiah replaced Bharadwaj as Governor of Karnataka.
Shahid Siddiqui is a former member of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament representing the state of Uttar Pradesh from 2002 to 2008. He is a journalist and the chief editor of the Nai Duniya, an Urdu weekly published from New Delhi.
Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge is an Indian lawyer and politician serving as the President of the Indian National Congress since 2022, and Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha since 2021. He has been a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha from Karnataka since 2020.
A.K.A. Abdul Samad was a prominent Tamil politician, and an important leader of the Indian Union Muslim League. He was also a journalist, editor, author, educationist and businessman. He is popularly known in his native states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala by the title "Siraj-ul-Millat".
Sarojini Bindurao Mahishi was an Indian teacher, lawyer, activist and politician. She was the first woman Member of Parliament from the State of Karnataka, who represented the constituency Dharwad North for four terms between 1962 and 1980. In 1983 she was elected to the Rajya Sabha as member of the Janata Party.
Daradahalli Byregowda Chandregowda was an Indian politician who was Speaker of Karnataka Legislative Assembly, three-term MLA, one-term MLC, and Member of Parliament—three-terms from Lok Sabha and one-term from Rajya Sabha.
R. Roshan Baig is a former seven-time member of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly and Minister from South Indian state of Karnataka. He has also been vice-chairman of the Al-Ameen Educational Society. A seven-time MLA, from 1984 to 1994 he was the member of the Janata Party for the first two terms as the MLA and from 1994 to 2019 he was the member of the Indian National Congress for 5 of his MLA terms. Baig was suspended from the Indian National Congress in 2019 after he insulted top Congress leaders for the party's poor performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Roshan Baig had held former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's "arrogance" and Dinesh Gundu Rao's "immaturity" responsible for the "flop show". He was also blamed for praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi's initiatives for inclusive development.
2020 Rajya Sabha elections were the set of indirect elections by the members of State legislatures of India, to elect new members to fill vacancies in the Rajya Sabha – the upper house of the Parliament of India. The elections are held annually and throughout the year on an ad hoc basis. The elections in 2020 are for a total of 73 seats of which 55 of them were to be elected by March 26. The remaining were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Election Commission of India later announced all the elections for the remaining 24 Rajya Sabha seats were to be held on 19 June 2020.
Rajya Sabha elections were held throughout 2021, to elect new members to fill vacancies in the Rajya Sabha, the Indian Parliament's upper chamber. Members sit for staggered terms lasting six years, with elections every year but almost a third of the 233 designates up for election every two years.
Ashok Gasti was an Indian politician and a lawyer from Raichur, Karnataka. He was a Member of Parliament who represented Karnataka in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, for less than 3 months until his death in 2020. He previously served as the former general secretary of the BJP's OBC Cell and served as the chairman of the State Backward Class Development Corporation.
M. Basavaraju was an Indian politician of the Indian National Congress. He was also member of Karnataka Legislative Assembly and member of Rajya Sabha.
J.P. Javali was an Indian politician and Member of Rajya Sabha from 1988 to 1994.
