The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Official nominations for Rajya Sabha, Council polls found to be in order

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Wednesday, Jun 18, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Official nominations for Rajya Sabha, Council polls found to be in order

Special Correspondent

BJP challenges Nanaiah’s nomination, but it has been accepted

Declaration of results on Thursday only a formality
Nominations filed by independents rejected

Bangalore: The nomination papers filed by Bharatiya Janata party, Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) candidates for the Rajya Sabha and Legislative Council elections have been found to be in order by the Returning Officer.

With the number of candidates in the fray being equal to the number of vacancies in both the Rajya Sabha and the Legislative Council, the declaration of election results is only a formality. The announcement will be made on Thursday after the deadline for withdrawal of candidature.

All the four nominations filed by the official candidates of the parties for the Rajya Sabha — Rama Jois and Prabhakar Kore of the BJP and S.M. Krishna and Anil Lad of the Congress — were cleared. The nomination papers filed by two independents, T.D.R. Harishchandra and Hemaraj, were rejected because they did not have the required number of proposers.

Similarly the nomination papers of the seven candidates for the Legislative Council — M.C. Nanaiah and K.V. Narayanaswamy (JD-S), Bharathi Shetty, Siddaraju, V.S. Acharya and Shankarappa (BJP) and M.V. Rajasekharan (Congress) — were cleared. The papers filed by an independent, Sudhakar, were rejected owing to lack of proposers.

Challenged

The nomination filed by Mr. Nanaiah was challenged by B.H. Lokesh, on behalf of the BJP. In the objection filed before the Secretary of the Council, V. Shreesh (Returning Officer), Mr. Lokesh said Mr. Nanaiah had not filed his nomination according to the format prescribed by the Election Commission of India, particularly Form 26, where Mr. Nanaiah was required to State if there were any criminal cases against him.

Mr. Nanaiah, an advocate and former Law Minister, in his defence argued that the clause in Form 26 states that if the candidate does not have any criminal record or police case filed against him, he need not furnish the details asked for in the second part of the form.

Mr. Shreesh conferred with officials and concluded that the nomination was in order. He even endorsed it on the appeal letter submitted by Mr. Nanaiah.

Later, speaking to presspersons, Mr. Nanaiah said that it was an attempt by the BJP to keep him out of the Upper House as the BJP feared that he would speak out on social issues, which that party always wanted to suppress.

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