Congress wins four council seats in Karnataka

Bengaluru, June 10: The ruling Congress won four seats, while the opposition BJP secured two and JD-S one in biennial elections to the 75-member Karnataka legislative council here on Friday, the state election commission said.

The winners are Allam Veerabhadrappa, R.B. Timmapur, Rizwan Arshad and Veena Achaiah (all Congress), V. Somanna and Lehar Singh Siroya of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and K.V. Narayanswamy of Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S).

Of the 11 vacancies caused by the retirement of outgoing lawmakers, election to four seats from two graduates' (South & North-West) and two teachers' (West & North-West) constituencies in the state were held on Thursday. Counting is on June 13.

For the seven remaining seats, in which lawmakers of the 225-member legislative assembly voted on Friday, the ruling party's all four candidates won on first preferential votes from its 123 members.

A contestant needs a minimum of 29 votes to win a council seat in the state.

With BJP having 44 members, its first candidate (Somanna) won comfortably, while its second candidate (Lehar Singh) managed to garner the required votes (29) from other parties and nine independents in addition to his party's 15 surplus votes.

The BJP re-nominated Somanna for the council seat.

Though the JD-S, with 40 members, got its first candidate (Narayanswamy) win, its second nominee S.M. Venkatpathi failed to get the required (29) votes.

JD-S rebel lawmaker Zammer Ahmed claimed that he voted for one of the four Congress nominees.

Besides Venkatpathi, three independents -- B.R. Anil Kumar, K.A. Mohan and V. Hiremath -- were also defeated in the council poll.

IANS