BENGALURU: While CM DK Shivakumar has maintained that he was unaware of cross-voting by BJP and JDS MLAs in Thursday’s polls to seven MLC seats, of which Congress won five, his cabinet colleague and PWD Minister Satish Jarkiholi remarked that Shivakumar gave a befitting response to the BJP national leadership.
Drawing parallels to the BJP allegedly poaching MLAs from rival parties, Satish said Shivakumar adopted the same model in Karnataka.
“What happened in Delhi has now happened in Karnataka as well. That has become a model, and our CM has adopted the model here. Congress has adopted the BJP model for the first time,” he said. However, he clarified that the Congress stayed away from direct “horse-trading”. Jarkiholi acknowledged that cross-voting in favour of the Congress party indeed took place.
“Four votes might have come from JDS and seven votes from BJP. It is true they voted for us,” he stated. He attributed it to internal rifts within the opposition, suggesting that “dissatisfaction or differences within their leadership could be the reason why they voted for us”, or there could be personal “friendships or relations”.
On reports regarding a Congress MLA’s cross-voting or incorrect allocation of votes for Congress candidate PV Mohan, he said, “Nothing has gone out from our side; even if something happened, it did not go outside (the party).”
Notably, Mohan was allotted 30 Congress MLAs’ votes but polled 29 and won.