The Congress retained the Ballari City Municipal Corporation by bagging 21 of the 39 seats with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning 13, and five Independent candidates. The Bidar Municipal Council turned into a hung house as no party achieved simple majority.
The elections to the local urban bodies were held on Tuesday and the counting of votes was completed on Friday. The strong rooms, where the electronic voting machines were kept, were opened on Friday morning in the presence of the candidates and the vote counting was completing within a few hours.
The elections in Ballari saw an intense fight between the Congress and the BJP candidates in most of the constituencies. There were 35 constituencies in the last elections and the Congress had won 26 of them. The BSR Congress won six, the JD(S) one, and there were two Independent candidates. The BJP did not win a single seat. However, the saffron party showed a good performance this time with its 13 seats.
Ward No. 3 had triggered curiousity among political parties and observers after the Congress fielded Basavaraj Gowda B., preferring him over M. Prabhanjan Kumar, a frontline contender for the party ticket.
Denied the ticket, Mr. Kumar contested the election as an Independent candidate. He finally won the intense electoral battle with an impressive margin of 2,802 votes, the highest margin that any candidate achieved in the elections, against his nearest rival, Mr. Gowda of the Congress, who polled 1,308 votes.
Elections were held for 33 of the 35 wards in the Bidar City Municipal Council as the matter regarding the remaining two wards was in court. As no party got enough seats to achieve a simple majority, the council turned to be a hung house. The Congress emerged as the single largest party with 15 seats, followed by the BJP (8), the JDS (7), the AIMIM (2), and the AAP (1). Last time, the BJP and the JD(S) had jointly held the power.
Accepting the people’s verdict for Ballari Municipal Corporation, Infrastructure Development, Haj and Wakf Minister and Ballari in-charge B.S. Anand Singh said that all leaders in the party were responsible for the defeat.
“Social Welfare Minister B. Sriramulu and Ballari MLA G. Somashekhar Reddy alone are not responsible for the party’s poor performance in the urban local body elections. We all are responsible. We will retrospectively review and find the reasons for the defeat. Victories and defeats are very common in electoral politics. People have defeated former Chief Minister Siddaramiah himself his hometown. People in Badami elected him though he was an outsider to the constituency. This is all common,” he added.
