The ruling BJP and the Congress on Wednesday won one seat each in the Legislative Council from the teachers constituencies, with the BJP nominee and former Chairman Basavaraj Horatti winning a record eighth successive electoral battle. The two parties were leading in one seat each in the graduates constituencies after the latest round of counting.
The BJP won the Karnataka West Teachers seat and was leading in the Karnataka North-west Graduates constituency, while the Congress won the Karnataka North-west Teachers constituency and was leading in the Karnataka South Graduates constituency.
Before the election results, the BJP held 38 seats in the 75-member Upper House while the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) held 24 and nine seats, respectively, in the House.
Mr. Horatti’s record came in the West Teachers constituency where he trounced his one-time associate and Congress candidate Basavaraj Gurikar by a margin of 4,669 votes. Mr. Horatti polled 9,266 votes as against Mr. Gurikar who polled 4,597 votes.
The election was necessitated as the term of Mr. Horatti, BJP’s Arun Shahpur (North-west Teachers), and Hanumanth Nirani (North-west Graduates), and K.T. Srikante Gowda (South Graduates) of the Janata Dal (Secular) comes to an end on July 4. Of the four, Mr. Horatti, who shifted from the JD(S) to the BJP days before he filed his nomination papers, resigned from his membership to the Council as well as from the Chairman’s post. The JD(S) changed the candidature of Mr. Gowda.
In the North-west Teachers constituency, the Congress pulled off a victory against the BJP as senior party leader Prakash Hukkeri defeated incumbent BJP MLC Arun Shahpur by a margin of 5,055 votes. Mr. Hukkeri polled 11,460 votes as against 6,405 votes polled by Mr. Shahpur. Conceding defeat, Mr. Shahpur said he would accept the voters’ verdict.
With the transferable preferential voting system in place, the counting took time. While the results of the teachers constituencies came early since the number of votes polled was less, with 21,402 votes in the North-west Teachers constituency and 15,583 votes in the West Teachers constituency, the results of the graduates constituencies took time as the number of votes polled was higher. The number of votes polled in the South Graduates constituency was 99,304 and in the North-west Graduates constituency, it was 58,752.
In the South Graduates constituency, which saw an intense triangular fight, Madhu Made Gowda, the Congress candidate and son of late farmers’ leader G. Made Gowda, was leading by 2,958 votes when 49,700 votes, which is about half of the votes polled, had been counted. He had polled 16,137 first preference votes to lead from his nearest rival BJP candidate M.V. Ravishankar, who had polled 13,179. The JD(S) candidate Ramu was trailing behind in third place with 8,512 votes.
The results of the North-west Graduates constituency where Mr. Hanumanth Nirani, brother of Industries Minister Murugesh Nirani, was leading at the end of the fifth round of counting with a total of 34,495 first preference votes, a lead of 27,000 over Congress candidate Sunil Sunk who polled 7,495 votes.
