Karnataka Council polls: BJP wins 3 seats, JD(S) 2, Congress 1

Bengaluru, Jun 13: The Bharatiya Janata Party won in three out of the six Karnataka Legislative Council seats, the results of which were announced on Wednesday. Of the remaining three, JD(S) won two seats while Congress won one seat. Polls were held on June 6, for six seats of which four were held by BJP and two by JD(S).

BJP candidates A. Deve Gowda, Ayanur Manjunath and Y.A. Narayanaswamy emerged victorious in Bengaluru Graduates’, South-West Graduates’ and South-East Teachers’ constituencies, respectively.

JD(S) candidates S.L. Bhoje Gowda and Marithibbe Gowda won from South-West Teachers’ and South Teachers’ constituencies, respectively. The Congress registered victory in the North-East Graduates’ constituency with great difficulty.

While Mr. Bhoje Gowda defeated BJP’s Capt. Ganesh Karnik in South-West Teachers’ constituency, Mr. Manjunath emerged victorious in South-West Graduates’ constituency after the first round of counting on the basis of first-preferential votes. Mr. Manjunath polled 25,250 votes against Congress candidate S.P. Dinesh, who secured 16,157 votes, out of the total valid votes of 43,051.

In fact, the Congress registered its first victory and the BJP tasted its first defeat in the 30-year history of the North-East Graduates’ constituency. Congress candidate Chandrashekhar B. Patil defeated his nearest rival K.B. Srinivas of the BJP by a slender margin of 321 votes.

The counting of the votes for the North-East Graduates’ constituency started on Tuesday morning at the Department of Mathematics of Gulbarga University and continued till early on Wednesday. The final results were out by 5.20 a.m. on Wednesday after several rounds of preferential votes were counted as none of the candidates crossed the halfway mark in the first preferential votes. Since no candidate in the top of the grid got to the finishing line in the first preferential votes, the process of eliminating candidates from the bottom of the grid and distributing the preferential votes on their ballot papers among the respective candidates began just a few minutes after Tuesday midnight.

However, even after eliminating eight of the 10 candidates, neither Mr. Srinivas of the BJP nor Mr. Patil of the Congress could touch the magic figure of 24,414. At the final tally, Mr. Patil had 18,768 votes and Mr. Srinivas had 18,447 votes. Mr. Patil was declared the winner as he was leading by 321 votes.