BENGALURU: While MPs, MLAs and MLCs across Karnataka will be exercising their franchise on Friday in the elections to 25 Council seats from 20 local body constituencies, their counterparts, including ministers, elected from Assembly constituencies coming under Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) limits, will not be doing so.
With the term of the BBMP council having ended in September 2020, the names of about 35 leaders, including three Lok Sabha members — P C Mohan (Bengaluru Central), Tejasvi Surya (Bengaluru South) and D V Sadananda Gowda (Bengaluru North) — and 24 MLAs belonging to the JDS, the Congress and the BJP are not included in the final electoral list for the Bengaluru Urban Council seat. Ministers V Somanna, R Ashoka, V Munirathna, Dr C N Ashwath Narayan, Byarthi Basavaraj and Gopalaiah also will not be voting in Friday’s MLC polls.
“There is no elected body in the BBMP. When the local body itself does not exist, there is no question of ex-officio members,” Karnataka CEO Manojkumar Meena told TNIE. “Only the names of Anekal MLA B Shivanna and Bengaluru Rural MP D K Suresh are in the list since they are ex-officio members of the town municipalities in their respective constituencies,” Bengaluru Urban Deputy Commissioner J Manjunath, who is also the electoral officer of Bengaluru Urban Council seat, told TNIE.But the MPs, MLAs and MLCs of Hubballi-Dharwad have their names in the electoral list as the elections to the city corporation was held and gazetted recently, clarified Dharwad DC Nitesh Patil. Similarly, it is applicable even to elected representatives from Belagavi and Kalaburagi.
KPCC working president and BTM Layout MLA Ramalinga Reddy, who has been raising his objection to delimitation of 198 BBMP wards, regretted that the legislators will not be able to vote on Friday as elections to BBMP were deferred several times in the past.