Bengaluru: In a major setback to the BJP-JD(S) opposition coalition in Karnataka, the ruling Congress won five of seven seats to the Legislative Council in the biennial elections on Thursday, at the cost of the combined opposition which witnessed at least 11 members of the Legislative Assembly cross voting in favour of the Congress.
Though JD(S) itself has 18 members in the Legislative Assembly, its candidate Govindaraj managed to get only 14 votes, despite BJP transferring excess votes. Interestingly, Congress party's fifth candidate Vinay Karthik, who was expected to scrape through during the preferential votes secured 32 votes, higher than the official candidates of both Congress and BJP.
Interestingly, one of the votes cast by the sitting MLA was declared invalid by the returning officer. At the end, it looks like there were cross voting by four BJP members, while at least seven JD(S) legislators had voted against the party candidate.
In the 224 member Legislative Assembly, two Congress members -- Sathish Sail and Vinay Kulakarni have been disqualified after they were convicted by the court. Congress has 135 members, while BJP has 62 members. JD(S) has 18 members, while BJP expelled members numbers 3. There are four independent members in the house also.
While one of the expelled members from BJP -- Basannagouda Patil openly said that he voted for BJP candidate Lingaraj Patil, two others voted for Congress.While one independent member Gali Janardhan Reddy stayed with BJP, three others went with Congress. That takes the Congress number to 140 and BJP number to 64.
As per the numbers, one needed 28 votes to get elected in the first round. Congress had first fielded four candidates -- B K Hariprasad, Thippannappa Kamakanura, P V Mohan and B S Shivanna. BJP fielded Raghu Koutilya and Lingaraj Patil. Since one more post was vacant and there was no requisite number with any party for the seventh post, Congress fielded Vinay Karthik, while JD(S) fielded Govindaraj.
Both Congress and BJP allocated 30 votes each to their official candidates, leaving 20 votes for Vinay Karthik and 22 votes for Govindaraj, which included the votes of 18 BJP members.
When the counting of votes concluded, Vinay Karthik had secured 32 votes, 12 more than allotted for him, while Congress candidate P V Mohan got only 29 votes, which is construed to be the invalid vote.
However, despite Basannagouda Patil voting for Lingaraj Patil, he got only 27 votes, which means that he had lost four official votes. Raghu Koutilya of BJP also got only 29 votes, which is being calculated as cross voting. In JD(S), even if the four BJP allotted votes have gone in favour of Govindaraj, he has got only 14 votes, leading to suspicions of cross voting by at least seven to eight members. Interestingly, barring senior JD(S) leader G T Deve Gowda, who is miffed with Union Minister and JD(S) supremo H D Kumaraswamy, no one even showed a clue about being approached by the Congress.
