BJP's 'Dark Horse' Gowtham Kumar becomes Bengaluru Mayor

Bengaluru, Oct 01: The BJP corporator M Gowtham Kumar was elected as Bengaluru Mayor on Tuesday defeating Congress nominee R S Sathyanarayana.

Kumar, who represents Jogupalya ward, secured 129 votes as against Sathyanarayana (Dattatreya Temple ward) who got 112 in a 249-vote electoral college, which comprise city corporators, Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha members, MLAs and the MLCs from Bengaluru.

Despite emerging as the single largest party in the BBMP (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) council in 2015 by winning 101 seats out of 198 seats, the party was not able to get the post of mayor or deputy mayor as it fell short on numbers in the electoral college.

The major blow to BJP's rivals Congress and the JD(S), which continue to have coalition in the BBMP council, was the disqualification of several of their MLAs by the then Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar earlier this year after their resignation.

The five city MLAs among them -- Munirathna, S T Somashekhar, Byrathi Basavaraj, K Gopalaiah and R Roshan Baig -- could not vote.

Soon after winning the election, celebration broke out at Kumar's residence with distribution of sweets.

However, there were protests too against his victory.

Pro-Kannada organisation Kannada Chalavali (Vatal Paksha) staged a protest in the city alleging that an 'outsider' has been made the city mayor.

Kumar, who is originally from Rajasthan, hails from Jain community.