Karnataka   

BJP sweeps Karnataka Council elections

BANGALORE: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won three of the four Legislative Council seats for which elections were held on June 26. The counting was in progress for the fifth seat —Karnataka South East Graduates constituency — at the time of going to the press.

The BJP has wrested two important seats from the Congress — the Dakshina Kannada Local Authorities Constituency and the Karnataka West Graduates’ Constituency. The Congress has drawn a blank in the elections while the other important party, the Janata Dal (Secular) has with the victory of B. Puttanna , retained the Bangalore Teachers constituency. The senior Congress leader and former Minister, H.K. Patil faced his second electoral defeat in about a month. While he lost the Gadag Assembly seat in the Legislative Assembly elections, in the Legislative Council elections he has lost to a political greenhorn Mohan Limbikai of the BJP by nearly 4,500 votes. A four-term Council member, Mr. Patil was elected to the Upper House in 1984, 1990, 1996 and 2002 and has lost the Council election for the first time.

Nine candidates contested the election from this constituency. The counting is on for the Karnataka South East Graduates Constituency where BJP candidate A.H. Shivayogi Swamy is stated to be leading.

The BJP has won the elections from Karnataka West Graduates (Mohan Limbikai) and Karnataka Northeast Teachers Constituency (Shashil Namoshi). Mr. Namoshi has won for the third time with a record margin of 9,227 votes. Mr. Namoshi defeated Ajagond Annaraya Channappa of the Congress.

There were four independents in the fray and all of them polled less than 50 votes. As many as 780 votes were declared invalid.

In the Bangalore Teachers’ Constituency, Mr Puttanna defeated M. Neelaiah of the BJP by a margin of 2,472 votes. Mr. Puttanna polled 7,550 votes and the BJP candidate secured 5,078 votes. Vatal Nagaraj of Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha bagged 131 votes and Raghavendra of the Congress polled 111 votes. Mr. Nagaraj had lost the recent Assembly polls.

The BJP has wrested the Dakshina Kannada Local Authorities Constituency seat from the Congress. Kota Srinivas Poojary defeated his Congress rival Nithyananda Mundodi by a margin of 293 votes. The byelection was necessitated by the death of Congress MLC Blasius M. D’Souza whose term was to have expired on January 5, 2010.

Mr. Poojary secured 3,110 of the 6,026 votes polled. Mr. Mundodi secured 2,817 votes. Ninety nine votes were declared invalid.

In 2004, Mr. D’ Souza had defeated BJP district unit president K. Monappa Bhandary by 33 votes. Mr. Poojary, Udupi BJP district unit president, is a member of Udupi Zilla Panchayat.

The election came as a shock to the Congress as it lost all seats that it contested. Political analysts blamed the infighting among the leaders for the poor show.

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