BENGALURU: Voting for four seats of Karnataka legislative council is underway to elect members to South-East graduates, West Graduates, Northeast teachers and Bangalore teachers constituencies. The polling that started at 8 AM has seen considerably low voter turnout till noon.
Till 12 noon, North East Teachers constituency has seen 36.49% voter turnout, 32 % in Bangalore Teachers, 24% in South East Graduate and 24.89% in West Graduate seat.
A total of 40 candidates are in the fray for elections that have a total of 2,34,718 voters. Counting of votes for the biennial elections will be held on November 2. Currently, four seats are vacant in the 75-member Legislative Council and with the conclusion of these elections, the House will be at full strength.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has 27 members in the Council and is keen on upscaling, especially after two of its key bills- APMC act amendment bill and Land reforms amendment bill were defeated in the Legislative Council during the September sitting of the house. Even if the party were to win all four seats, it would still be in a minority unless backed by one of the opposition parties. Congress has 29 members in the Council whereas the JDS has 14. One MLC is independent. All three primary political parties have fielded their candidates in all four seats.
A total of 15 candidates are in the fray for the South-East Graduate Constituency including Chidanand M Gowda of BJP, R Chowda Reddy Thoopalli from JDS and Ramesh Babu of Congress. 11 candidates are fighting for West Graduates' constituency including RM Kuberappa of the Congress, Kallur Shivashakar Channappa of JDS and Sankanur SV of BJP.
For Northeast teachers' constituency five candidates including Timmayya Purle of JDS, Sharanappa Mattur of Congress and Shashil G Namoshi of the BJP are in the fray. Vatal Nagaraj of Kannada Chaluvalu Vatal Paksha too is one of the candidates. 11 candidates are in the fray contesting for Bengaluru teachers' constituency including Puttanna from BJP, Praveen Peter from Congress and AP Ranganath from JDS.
The Southeast Graduates constituency includes regions of Chitradurga, Tumakuru, Kolar, Chikkaballapur and Davangere. West Graduates seat includes Dharwad, Haveri, Gadag and Uttara Kannada. Northeast teachers seat includes regions of Bidar, Kalburgi, Yadgir, Raichur, Koppal and Ballari- districts severely affected by the recent bout of incessant rains and flooding. Bangalore teachers' seat includes Bengaluru rural and Urban and Ramanagara districts.
Polling is underway in 549 polling stations including auxiliary units.