Council polls: BJP bags three seats, JD(S) two, Congress one

Cong. wins North-East Graduates’ constituency for first time

All smiles: BJP candidates Y.A. Narayanaswamy and A. Deve Gowda congratulating each other after their victory in the elections to the Legislative Council, in Bengaluru on Wednesday.

The results of the biennial elections to the Karnataka Legislative Council from six teachers’ and graduates’ constituencies have provided some relief to the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which failed to retain the Jayanagar Assembly constituency on Wednesday.

While BJP candidates emerged victorious in three seats, coalition partners — the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Congress — won two seats and one seat, respectively. BJP candidates A. Deve Gowda, Ayanur Manjunath and Y.A. Narayanaswamy emerged victorious in Bengaluru Graduates’, South-West Graduates’ and South-East Teachers’ constituencies, respectively. JD(S) candidates S.L. Bhoje Gowda and Marithibbe Gowda won from South-West Teachers’ and South Teachers’ constituencies, respectively. The Congress registered victory in the North-East Graduates’ constituency with great difficulty.

While Mr. Bhoje Gowda defeated BJP’s Capt. Ganesh Karnik in South-West Teachers’ constituency, Mr. Manjunath emerged victorious in South-West Graduates’ constituency after the first round of counting on the basis of first-preferential votes. Mr. Manjunath polled 25,250 votes against Congress candidate S.P. Dinesh, who secured 16,157 votes, out of the total valid votes of 43,051.

In fact, the Congress registered its first victory and the BJP tasted its first defeat in the 30-year history of the North-East Graduates’ constituency. Congress candidate Chandrashekhar B. Patil defeated his nearest rival K.B. Srinivas of the BJP by a slender margin of 321 votes.

A long process

The counting of the votes for the North-East Graduates’ constituency started on Tuesday morning at the Department of Mathematics of Gulbarga University and continued till early on Wednesday. The final results were out by 5.20 a.m. on Wednesday after several rounds of preferential votes were counted as none of the candidates crossed the halfway mark in the first preferential votes. Since no candidate in the top of the grid got to the finishing line in the first preferential votes, the process of eliminating candidates from the bottom of the grid and distributing the preferential votes on their ballot papers among the respective candidates began just a few minutes after Tuesday midnight.

However, even after eliminating eight of the 10 candidates, neither Mr. Srinivas of the BJP nor Mr. Patil of the Congress could touch the magic figure of 24,414. At the final tally, Mr. Patil had 18,768 votes and Mr. Srinivas had 18,447 votes. Mr. Patil was declared the winner as he was leading by 321 votes.