Over 650 nominations, including that of Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar, Ministers K.S. Eshwarappa, R. Ashok, Govind Karjol, were filed on Wednesday, the last date to do so for the 14th Karnataka Assembly elections.
In all, about 3,000 nominations have been filed since April 10 when the process began.
Mining tycoons Santosh Lad and Anil Lad too filed their papers contesting on Congress ticket from Kalghatgi and Bellary City constituencies even as the former Bangalore Mayor K. Chandrashekhar filed his papers from Basavanagudi constituency as an Independent candidate after being denied Congress ticket.
Mr. Shettar, accompanied by wife Shilpa Shettar, State BJP president Prahlad Joshi and others, arrived at the Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation office, without much fanfare. He did not even take out a procession before filing papers from Hubli-Dharwad (Central) constituency.
After visit to site
At Davangere, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee treasurer Shamanur Shivashankarappa and his son, S.S. Mallikarjun, filed their papers as Congress candidates from Davangere South and North respectively. Vinay Kumar Sorake and Shakuntala Shetty filed their papers as Congress candidates from Kaup in Udupi and Puttur in Dakshina Kannada districts respectively.
Minister for Revenue K.S. Eshwarappa filed his papers from Shimoga Assembly constituency. Home and Transport Minister R. Ashok arrived at the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike’s revenue office at Chennammanakere Achkat after visiting the Malleswaram explosion site to file his papers as BJP candidate from Padmanabhanagar Assembly constituency.
In Hiriyur
Ex-Congress leader A. Krishnappa, who joined Janata Dal (Secular) after being denied ticket from Krishnarajapura filed his papers from Hiriyur Assembly constituency in Chitradurga district. The former Minister T.B. Jayachandra and MLA Krishna Byre Gowda filed their papers as Congress candidates from Sira in Tumkur district and Byatarayanapura in Bangalore respectively.
Chief Electoral Officer Anil Kumar Jha told presspersons that 23 constituencies have more than 16 candidates, requiring the commission to arrange additional electronic voting machines for each polling station. Of the 3,000 total nominations, BJP candidates have filed 360; Congress - 408; JD(S) – 309; KJP – 230; BSR Congress-131; BSP – 129; JD (U) – 64; CPI – 39, CPM – 23 and Independents and others 1,051. Total number of candidates who have filed papers is 2,295, Mr. Jha said.
EC website chokes
At the last day to file nominations, the commission’s website: www.ceokarnataka.kar.nic.in continued to show the numbers at 421, which was the status at about 4 p.m. till late evening.
Details of many prominent candidates, including Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar, Ministers R. Ashok, K.S. Eshwarappa, Govind Karjol and others were not uploaded on the website.
Worse, the website did not have details of candidates from Shikaripura Assembly constituency, from where KJP President B.S. Yeddyurappa had filed the papers on Monday.
A senior official from the commission said the load on the server was enormous because of the simultaneous generation of the electoral roll.
To be solved
The server is being rebooted and the problem would be sorted out shortly, he said.
