BENGALURU: The polls held to elect 25 MLCs from 20 electoral constituencies in Karnataka went off peacefully with a record voter turnout of 99.8 per cent on Friday, a 0.2 per cent spike compared to the 2015 council polls.
Almost all the electoral constituencies witnessed a good turnout with the Kolar seat recording the highest at 99.9 per cent and Vijayapura the lowest at 99.55 per cent.
Bengaluru Urban recorded a whopping 99.86 percent polling with 2,070 members of the electorate out of 2,073 exercising their franchise.
The seat has two billionaires in the fray with Yousuf Sharief, declaring assets worth Rs 1,744 crore, of the Congress and Gopinath Reddy of the BJP who declared Rs 34 crore as his net worth.
As many as 15 nominated members to Anekal town municipality whose voting rights were questioned by the Congress candidate Yusouf Sharief with a writ petition at the Karnataka High Court had also exercised their franchise. However, a separate ballot box was placed for them as the HC's decision is pending as to whether their votes can be taken for the counting or not.
But nominated members to urban local bodies elsewhere across Karnataka exercised their franchise as usual.
"The court's decision, in the next hearing on Monday (December 13), will have its ramifications across the country," observed Prof. Raviverma Kumar, counsel for Yousuf.
The continued high rate of polling has been attributed to the highly aware electorate -- all elected representatives in the urban and rural local bodies including the Gram Panchayats.
This apart, in some seats where the contest was stiff, the candidates themselves ensured almost all the voters turned up, sources informed The New Indian Express.
Although the polling hours extended from 8 am to 4 pm, some of the polling stations set up at Gram Panchayats across the state recorded cent per cent polling by 12 noon.
The electoral seats of Dakshina Kannada, Bidar, Uttara Kannada, Raichur, Ballari, Shivamogga, Chikkamagaluru, Hassan, Bengaluru rural, Bengaluru Urban and Kodagu had recorded over 90 per cent by 2 p.m and by the end reached 99 per cent. "It may go beyond this with an increase of 0.1 to 0.5 per cent," noted an official source.
Chief Minister Basavaraja Bommai, leader of opposition Siddaramaiah, KPCC president D K Shivakumar and leader of opposition in the Council S R Patil were among those who exercised their franchise as the ex-officio members of the respective urban local bodies in their constituencies.
However, those in Bengaluru including MPs and MLAs had lost their rights as the BBMP body is non-existent and they could not claim ex-officio membership.
Now, political circles are keenly awaiting the results which will be out on December 14 when the counting of votes takes place.