Congress wins four council seats in Karnataka

The ruling Congress won four seats, while the opposition BJP secured two and JD-S one seat in the biennial elections to the 75-member Karnataka legislative council here on Friday, the state election commission said.

The winners are Allam Veerabhadrappa, R.B. Timmapur, Rizwan Arshad and Veena Achaiah (all Congress), V. Somanna and Lehar Singh Siroya of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and K.V. Narayanaswamy of Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S).

Of the 11 vacancies caused by the retirement of outgoing lawmakers, election to four seats from two graduates' (South & North-West) and two teachers' (West & North-West) constituencies in the state were held on Thursday. Counting is on June 13.

For the seven seats, in which lawmakers of the 225-member legislative assembly voted on Friday, the ruling party's all four candidates won on first preferential votes from its 125 members, including the speaker and the nominated lawmaker

A contestant needs a minimum of 29 votes to win a council seat in the state.

With BJP having 44 members, its first candidate (Somanna) won comfortably, while its second candidate (Lehar Singh) secured the required votes (29) from members of other parties and nine independents in addition to his party's 15 surplus votes.

Somanna was re-nominated for the council seat.

Though the JD-S, with 40 members, got its first candidate (Narayanaswamy) to win, its second nominee S.M. Venkatapathi could get only 5 of his party's 11 surplus votes, as six of its rebel members cross voted in favour of Congress and BJP contestants.

JD-S rebel lawmaker Zameer Ahmed, in fact, claimed that he voted for Arshad of the Congress.

Besides Venkatapathi, three independents -B.R. Anil Kumar, K.A. Mohan and V. Hiremath were also defeated in the council poll.

--IANS

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