BENGALURU: The BJP, the single-largest party in the 198-member Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike council, which had been forced to the opposition benches since the last election, pulled off a coup of sorts with its corporator from Jogupalya ward, M Goutham Kumar (43) being elected the 53rd Mayor on Tuesday. The party’s CR Ramamohan Raju was elected Deputy Mayor.
This time, the BBMP council had announced that elections for the Mayor and Deputy Mayor posts were open to the general category. While the Congress announced its candidates on Monday night, the BJP had it under wraps till about half an hour before the election on Tuesday morning.
BJP leader in the council, Padmanabha Reddy, and Goutham Kumar had filed their nominations. But after much deliberation, Padmanabha Reddy was convinced by the party leadership to withdraw his nomination. Also, on the final call, Gurumurthy Reddy and Mahalakshmi H Ravindra withdrew from the contest for the Deputy Mayor’s post, making Ramamohan Raju’s victory a smooth affair. Goutham Kumar and Raju (who was elected 55th Deputy Mayor), beat their opponents by 110 votes.
Goutham Kumar beat his Congress rival R S Satyanarayana, who represents Dattatreya Temple ward, by securing the requisite 129 votes.
Raju beat the JD(S) candidate, Gangamma Rajanna, who represents Ganapathi Nagar ward.
Of the total 257 voters comprising 198 councillors, five Lok Sabha MPs and nine Rajya Sabha MPs, only 249 were present in the BBMP council on Tuesday during the mayoral election.
Interestingly, two JD(S) councillors — Manjula Narayanaswamy of Laggere ward and K Devadas of BTM Layout ward, walked out of the council, indirectly supporting the BJP. The BJP had the votes of 101 councillors, two Rajya Sabha and four Lok Sabha MPs, seven MLCs, eight MLAs and seven independent councillors.
What also worked against the Congress-JDS coalition was that the disqualified rebel MLAs were not permitted to vote. They included Munirathna, S T Somashekhar, Byrathi Basavaraj, K Gopalaiah and R Roshan Baig.
Also, Union Finance Minister and BJP Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka, Nirmala Sitharaman, Congress MP from Bengaluru Rural, D K Suresh, MLC Raghu Achar, MP Jairam Ramesh were absent. The JDS MLA from Dasarahalli, Manjunath, MLCs K V Narayanswamy and Puttanna too did not attend the proceedings.
According to Congress sources, T A Sarvana, C R Manohar, Ramesh Gowda, Padmavathi Narasimhamurthy, Gangamma, Devadas, Manjula Narayanswamy and Anand M did not vote for their mayor candidate. For the Deputy Mayor, Mahadeva, Hemalatha, Devadas and Manjula Narayanaswamy did not vote, which led to their defeat, the sources said.
During the voting, BJP MLC Lehar Singh was asked to sign by the council secretaries in favour of the Congress mayoral candidate. Singh, claiming to be unaware, was about to sign it when members Satish Reddy and Vishwanath spotted him. They brought it to the notice of Regional Election Officer Harsh Gupta, who asked the BBMP staffers to immediately correct it and warned them to be careful.
The elections to the four standing committees — taxation and finance, health, accounts and markets — were not held on Tuesday as no nominations were filed. The council then took a decision to hold the election to all 12 standing committees together.