Sudheendra Kulkarni | |
|---|---|
 Kulkarni in 2023 | |
| Director of Operations of the Prime Minister's Office | |
| In office 19 March 1999 –22 May 2004 | |
| Prime Minister | Atal Bihari Vajpayee |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Athani,Karnataka,India |
| Political party | Bhartiya Janata Party (1996-2009) |
| Residence | New Delhi |
| Alma mater | Indian Institute of Technology Bombay |
| Profession |
|
Sudheendra Kulkarni is an Indian politician and columnist. [1]
Kulkarni was educated at Jadhavji Anandji High School in Athani, a town in Belgaum district, Karnataka, India. He went on to study metallurgical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. [2]
A former member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), [3] Kulkarni joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1996. [4] Of this ideological switch he said, "People like me were living in an illusory land. I realised very late in my life that the Marxist ideology is not suitable in India - in fact, I would say it is unsuitable for any corner of the world." [5]
As a member of the BJP, he was associated with the India Shining campaign [6] and rode on the inaugural Delhi–Lahore Bus. [7] He helped former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee write his speeches [8] and in 2008 was acting as a strategist for Lal Krishna Advani, [9] who had influenced his rise within the party. [10]
Kulkarni resigned from the BJP in 2009. The electoral defeat suffered by the party, led by Advani, had effectively ended his role with the party and he had also become disenchanted with the influence exerted by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on party decision-making. [10]
In January 2012, he was reported to be once more working full-time for the BJP, on this occasion as an advisor to its president, Nitin Gadkari. He had been working for the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank, prior to this. [11]
Kulkarni worked as executive editor [5] for[ when? ] Blitz, a Mumbai-based tabloid format weekly that was edited and owned by Russi Karanjia. [12] According to Kulkarni, Karanjia was sympathetic to the communist movement in India but became disillusioned with it and its anti-Hindu secularism. [12] He became a strong sympathiser of the BJP and the Ayodhya movement, which led to Kulkarni being appointed in place of P. Sainath as deputy editor. Kulkarni was tasked with having Blitz reflect Karanjia's new-found sympathies. [12] Kulkarni then transformed Blitz from a left-wing newspaper into a BJP-oriented publication. [8]
Kulkarni joined the Hinduja Group of Companies as Vice President (Media) in the mid-1990s, at a time when the Hinduja Group's chairman was considering tying up with American newspapers to publish an Indian version. [13] It is reported that the Chairman, Srichand Hinduja noticed Sudheendra Kulkarni's Blitz article praising him as a modern-day 'Chanakya' or political diplomat, and arranged to meet him. Later, he joined the Hinduja Group, and wrote many speeches for the Chairman. The newspaper venture of the Hindua Group never took off, and after a few years of professional wilderness with the Hindujas, Kulkarni resigned to join the BJP.
In 2008, a sting operation was carried out that involved Kulkarni and another BJP activist. Later televised and known as the "cash-for-votes scandal", the operation purported to show a bribe of 10 million rupees being offered to three BJP MPs on behalf of the Indian National Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. The alleged bribes were intended to obtain the support of the MPs in the 2008 Lok Sabha Vote of Confidence. Subsequently, both the Kishore Chandra Deo committee — a parliamentary panel — and the police investigated the arrangements and questioned various participants, including Kulkarni. [14] [15] In 2011, Kulkarni was remanded in judicial custody for a period [16] and in November of that year was released on bail. [17] [18]
On 12 October 2015, Kulkarni was attacked by Shiv Sena activists for organising a book launch for former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri. The Sena alleged that Kulkarni had disrespected Indian soldiers by sharing a stage with Kasuri, and his attackers blackened his face and clothes with black paint. [19] Following the attack, Kulkarni continued with the book launch with his blackened face and clothes. [20]
In the run-up to the 2019 elections, Sudheendra Kulkarni switched sides again, and started openly supporting the Congress President Rahul Gandhi as the best candidate for the country's Prime Minister. [21] Citing many problems India faced such as China and Pakistan, he said that Rahul Gandhi, whom he described as a 'leader with a good heart' would become an ideal Prime Minister of India, and openly opposed Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Shiv Sena is a right-wing Marathi regionalist and Hindu ultranationalist political party in India founded in 1966 by Bal Thackeray. Shiv Sena's election symbol is the Bow and Arrow. It uses the saffron colour in its flag and a image of a roaring tiger.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian politician and statesman who served three terms as the 10th Prime Minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months from 1998 to 1999, followed by a full term from 1999 to 2004. Vajpayee was one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the BJP. He was a member of the RSS, a Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation. He was the first Indian prime minister not of the INC to serve a full term in office. He was also a renowned poet and a writer.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi, the incumbent Indian prime minister. The BJP is aligned with right-wing politics, and its policies adhere to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology. It has close ideological and organisational links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). As of March 2023, it is the country's biggest political party in terms of representation in the Parliament of India as well as state legislatures.
Lal Krishna Advani is an Indian politician who served as the 7th Deputy Prime Minister of India from 2002 to 2004. Advani is one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He is a long time member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a volunteer organisation. He is also the longest serving Minister of Home Affairs in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government from 1998 to 2004. He was the Leader of the Opposition in the 10th Lok Sabha and 14th Lok Sabha and also the longest serving person of this post. He was the Prime Ministerial candidate of BJP in 2009.
Rahul Rajiv Gandhi is an Indian politician and a former member of the Indian Parliament, who represented the constituencies of Amethi, Uttar Pradesh and Wayanad, Kerala in the Lok Sabha. He is a member of the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress and was the party president from December 2017 to July 2019. He is the chairperson of the Indian Youth Congress, the National Students Union of India and a trustee of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust. On 23 March 2023, he was convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment by a court in Gujarat for a 2019 speech made against the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on defamation allegations related to his surname; the conviction resulted in his disqualification from the Parliament.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is a centre-right to right-wing conservative Indian political alliance led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It was founded in 1998 and currently controls the government of India as well as the government of 15 Indian states and one Union territory.
Ram Boolchand Jethmalani was an Indian lawyer and politician. He served as India's Union minister of law and justice, as chairman of the Indian Bar Council, and as the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.
The Liberhan Commission was a long-running inquiry commissioned by the Government of India to investigate the destruction of the disputed structure Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992. Led by retired High Court Judge M. S. Liberhan, it was formed on 16 December 1992 by an order of the Indian Home Union Ministry after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December and the subsequent riots there. The commission was originally mandated to submit its report within three months. Extensions were given 48 times, and after a delay of 17 years, the one-man commission submitted the report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 30 June 2009. In November 2009, a day after a newspaper published the allegedly leaked contents of the report, the report was tabled in Parliament by the Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is a centre-left political alliance in India led by the Indian National Congress (INC). It was formed after the 2004 general election with support from left-leaning political parties when no single party got the majority. The UPA subsequently governed India from 2004 until 2014 before losing power to their main rivals, the BJP-led NDA. The UPA currently rules seven states of India.
Pramod Venkatesh Mahajan was an Indian politician from Maharashtra. A second-generation leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he belonged to a group of relatively young "technocratic" leaders. At the time of his death, he was in a power struggle for the leadership of the BJP, given the imminent retirement of its aging top brass.
Arvind Kejriwal is an Indian politician, activist and former bureaucrat, who is serving as the 7th and current Chief Minister of Delhi since 2015 and from 2013 to 2014. He is also the national convener of the Aam Aadmi Party since 2012. He represents New Delhi constituency in the Delhi Legislative Assembly since 2015 and from 2013 to 2014.
Rustom Khurshedji Karanjia was an Indian journalist and editor. He typically signed his reports as "R. K. Karanjia". He founded the Blitz, a weekly tabloid with focus on investigative journalism in 1941, and ran it for the next four decades. He also founded The Daily, a daily tabloid which was run by his daughter.
General elections were held in India in nine phases from 7 April to 12 May 2014 to elect the members of the 16th Lok Sabha. With 834 million registered voters, they were the largest-ever elections in the world until being surpassed by the 2019 elections. Around 23.1 million or 2.7% of the total eligible voters were aged 18–19 years. A total of 8,251 candidates contested the 543 elected Lok Sabha seats. The average election turnout over all nine phases was around 66.40%, the highest ever in the history of Indian general elections.
The cash-for-votes scandal was an Indian political scandal allegedly masterminded by then Opposition Party Bharatiya Janata Party politician Sudheendra Kulkarni in which the United Progressive Alliance, the majority-holding parliamentary-party alliance of India led by Sonia Gandhi, allegedly bribed Bhartiya Janta Party MPs in order to survive a confidence vote on 22 July 2008. The vote in the Lok Sabha arose after the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front withdrew support from the government, who wanted to pursue an Indo-US nuclear deal.
On 29 September 2008 three bombs exploded in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra of India killing 10 people and injuring 80. Two bombs went off in Malegaon, Maharashtra, which killed nine people while another blast in Modasa, Gujarat resulted in the death of one person.
The 14th indirect presidential election, in order to elect the 13th President, was held in India on 19 July 2012. The last date for filing nominations was 30 June, whereas the votes would be counted on 22 July. The two leading candidates for the presidency were former Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee from West Bengal and former Speaker of the Lok Sabha Purno Agitok Sangma from Meghalaya.
The demolition of the Babri Masjid was carried out on 6 December 1992 by a large group of activists of the Vishva Hindu Parishad and allied organisations. The 16th-century Babri Masjid in the city of Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh, India, had been the subject of a lengthy socio-political dispute, and was targeted after a political rally organised by Hindu nationalist organisations turned violent.
The Scorpene deal scam was an Indian bribery scandal, in which USD 175 million were alleged to have been paid to government decision makers by Thales. Defence minister Pranab Mukherjee had approved a deal to build Scorpène-class submarines worth US$3 billion with Thales, France in October 2005. The investigating agency, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), found no evidence of corruption in the deal in 2008. Scorpène-class submarines are now being built in India under a technology transfer agreement that was part of that contract.
Blitz was a popular investigative weekly tabloid newspaper or newsmagazine published and edited by Russi Karanjia from Bombay. Started in 1941, it was India's first weekly tabloid and focussed on investigative journalism and political news. It was published in English, and with editions in Hindi, Urdu and Marathi languages.
Inking or ink throwing is the act of throwing ink at people, or cars. It has been used as a form of political protest in India.