Bengaluru: The polling for the election of four Rajya Sabha seats ended in Karnataka on Tuesday and in a setback to NDA, Shivaram Hebbar, the BJP MLA from Yellapur abstained from voting.
Earlier, BJP MLA S.T. Somashekar had allegedly indulged in cross-voting and cast his vote for the Congress candidate.
The counting will take place shortly and results will be announced by Tuesday evening.
It is most likely that all three candidates of Congress, AICC Treasurer Ajay Maken, Syed Naseer Hussain, and G.C. Chandrashekhar are set to win. While the NDA candidate Narayansa Bandage, a BJP leader is also expected to get elected to the Rajya Sabha. However, Kupendra Reddy, fielded by JD-S may lose.
Sources said that Congress candidate Ajay Maken secured 47, Naseer Hussain secured 47 votes and Chandrashekar secured 46 votes. BJP’s Narayansa Bandage has got 48 votes and Kupendra Reddy has managed to get only 35 votes.
Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar said that the BJP and JD (S) were asking for votes of conscience from the Congress. “But, they (BJP leaders) themselves have given the votes of conscience to the Congress,” the Deputy Chief Minister said.
He said that BJP could have transferred the additional votes to JD-S after ensuring 45 votes for their candidate. “The BJP and JD-S together had fielded the NDA candidate. The BJP got 48 votes but then they abandoned the JD-S candidate,” the Deputy Chief Minister said.
On cross-voting, he said, “I do not know about cross-voting. I have only seen my ballot paper. I have not even seen the ballot papers of independent MLAs. If this is the case how can I know about the cross voting? You can ask BJP leaders, they were talking about votes of conscience.”
