BENGALURU : Karnataka will witness its first election amid the Covid pandemic when voting for the biennial Legislative Council polls takes place on Wednesday. The polls for the South-East graduates, West Graduates, Northeast teachers and Bangalore teachers constituencies are being held to fill four
vacancies in the 75-member Council.
Forty contestants are in fray and 2,34,718 voters will cast their franchise. Counting of votes will be on November 2. At present in the Council, the BJP is in minority with 27 members and is desperate to increase its numbers after two of its key bills — the APMC act amendment bill and Land reforms amendment bill — were defeated in the Council in September.
Even if the party wins all the four seats, it will still be in minority, unless one of the opposition parties backs it. The Congress has 29 members, JDS 14 and one is an independent. All the three political parties have fielded their candidates in all four seats.
Fifteen candidates are in the race at the South-East Graduate Constituency, including Chidanand M Gowda of BJP, R Chowda Reddy Thoopalli from JDS and Ramesh Babu of Congress. Eleven are in fray at the West Graduates’ constituency, including R M Kuberappa of Congress, Kallur Shivashakar Channappa of JDS and Sankanur SV of BJP.
In the Northeast teachers’ constituency, five candidates including Timmayya Purle of JDS, Sharanappa Mattur of Congress and Shashil G Namoshi of the BJP are seeking votes. Vatal Nagaraj of Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha too is one of the candidates. In the Bengaluru teachers’ constituency, Puttanna from BJP, Praveen Peter from Congress and AP Ranganath of JDS are facing the election.
A holiday has been declared only for voters in these regions and polling will be held in 549 polling stations, including auxiliary units. The elections were necessitated after four MLCs retired. The polls should have taken place before June 30, but were delayed because of the pandemic.