Koujalgi wins the North West Graduates seat
Congress candidate from North West Graduates Constituency Mahantesh Koujalgi won the elections to the Karnataka Legislative Council after 10th round of elimination counting here late on Saturday.
He defeated his nearest rival and Janata Dal (United) candidate M P Nadgouda in the elimination round. Nadgouda had won four consecutive elections from the constituency and it was his maiden defeat from the constituency.
After the first round of counting of votes for the North West Graduates Constituency, Congress candidate Koujalgi had secured 15,847 votes, Bharatiya Janata Party candidate R S Mutalik had secured 10,262 votes and sitting member of Nadgouda had secured 12,310 votes. After the 10th round of elimination Koujalgi secured 17857 votes and Nadgouda secured 14748 votes.
After the first round of counting of votes for North West Teachers’ Constituency, BJP candidate Arun Shahapur had secured 3887 votes, Janata Dal (Secular) candidate Shahajanand Dandargi had secured 1,498 votes, Congress candidate Yogappagouda Patil had secured 396 votes, independent candidates S B Bannur had secured 2,128 votes, S A Hiremath had secured 1,689 votes and Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha candidate Vatal Nagaraj had secured 311 votes. A total of 15 candidates including independents were in the fray.
Among the total of 45509 votes polled for North West Graduates’ Constituency, a whopping 5617 were invalid casting doubts on the intellectual capacity of graduates. It appeared that appropriate methods to register votes weren’t followed by the graduates, while the invalid votes from North West Teachers’ Constituency were relatively low.
BJP in lead
The BJP has maintained a lead over its nearest rival JD(S) after third round of counting of votes for the elections to the State Legislative Council from the South Graduates’ Constituency, in Mysore on Saturday.
G Madhusudhan of BJP has secured 15,489 votes, sitting MLC and JD(S) candidate, K T Srikantegowda 12,514 votes, Javagal Manjunath of Congress 5,750 votes and M Lakshmana, an independent candidate has secured 3697 votes. As many as 3,692 votes were declared invalid.
The BJP nominee has been maintaining a comfortable lead from the first round. The counting is still on. The constituency had recorded 53.06 per cent voting in the elections held on June 30.
Several unparliamentary words and messages could be seen written on the ballot paper. The poll observer, Shalini Rajneesh, Regional Commissioner and Returning Officer M V Jayanthi, Deputy Commissioner Harsh Gupta are at the counting centre supervising the process.
