Voting began at 9 am and will continue till 4 pm before counting begins at 5 pm.
New Delhi:
Voting is taking place today for four Rajya Sabha seats in Karnataka amid suspense over possible cross-voting, which forced the Congress to move all its MLAs to a private resort on Monday.
There are five candidates in the race for Rajya Sabha, including Ajay Maken, Syed Naseer Hussain and GC Chandrashekhar from Congress, Narayan Bhandage from BJP and Kupendra Reddy from JD(S).
Voting began at 9 am and will continue till 4 pm before counting of votes at 5 pm.
Congress, with 134 MLAs, is facing a tough challenge from BJP with 66 MLAs, JD(S) with 19 MLAs and four others. The Congress claims it has the support of two independents and ‘others’ including Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha’s Darshan Puttannaiah and is confident of getting three seats. Interestingly, mining baron and former BJP minister from Kalyan Rajya Pragati Paksha G Janardhan Reddy met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah yesterday.
Despite having the strength to secure only one of the four available seats, the competition intensified after the BJP-JD(S) alliance fielded its second candidate, Kupendra Reddy.
Mr Reddy said his party had not sought any assistance from anyone as part of the NDA, but admitted that cross-voting could happen.
“There will probably be cross voting. If we threatened anyone or asked for votes, they (Congress) should have complained to the Election Commission. We did not ask for votes from anyone,” Mr Reddy said.
JD(S) chief HD Kumaraswamy said Congress was trying to destabilize his party from the very beginning, due to which he had to nominate a candidate in a show of strength. He assured that there will be no cross voting from the JD(S) side.
Kumaraswamy said, “From day one, Congress has been trying to destabilize JDS. To show its strength, we asked our candidate to file nomination. There will be no cross voting from my party’s side.”
In this Rajya Sabha election in Karnataka, each candidate needs 45 votes to ensure victory when only four candidates are in the fray. However, if there are more candidates, preference votes come into play, complicating the electoral dynamics.
The election has been triggered by the retirement of Union minister Rajiv Chandrashekhar from the BJP and Congress members GC Chandrashekhar, Syed Naseer Hussain and L Hanumanthaiah, whose tenure ends on April 2. The MLAs are using the open ballot system to cast their votes.
