Karnataka - Bellary   

Choosing the victor among equals

BELLARY: Lady Luck smiled down on eight candidates in the gram panchayat elections in the district when lots were drawn to decide the winners among candidates who had secured equal numbers of votes.

The lucky ones to enter the gram panchayat were Lakshmi from Bevinahalli constituency of Amarapur Gram Panchayat, Lakshmamma from Kurgodu (Bellary taluk), Urugubbi Veeresh of Sirigeri in Sirguppa taluk, and Mahadevi Kambli of Byluvaddigeri in Hospet taluk.

Another lucky contestant was Doddabasappa Yelbenchi who scraped through when a vote was added to his tally during recounting.

At first, Mr. Doddabasappa and his opponent Nagappa had 165 votes each.

In Bellary, elections were held to 186 gram panchayats during the first phase of the polling.

With 454 candidates elected unopposed and no nominations in three constituencies in Hadagali taluk, elections were held for 2,916 seats, for which 8,254 candidates were in the fray.

Well after midnight

Although counting began at 8 a.m. on Monday, progress was very slow and the process was wrapped up well after midnight. In Hagari Bommanahalli taluk, the counting process came to an end only at 3 a.m.

A total 688 candidates from the Scheduled Castes (403 men and 285 women), 734 from the Scheduled Tribes (312 women), 901 from the OBC ‘A' (373 women), 209 from the OBC ‘B' (54 women) and 838 from the general (332 women) categories entered the gram panchayats in the district.

Even several hours after the counting was completed, detailed information about the outcome of the elections was hard to come by.

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