Finance Minister and BJP Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka Nirmala Sitharaman remained absent for the mayoral elections. She was not present during the past mayoral elections also.
It looked like Sitharaman was engaged in another meeting on Tuesday that prevented her from participating in the mayoral elections. This was hinted through one of the tweets from Sitharaman’s Twitter handle on Tuesday that said: “Shri @himantabiswa, Minister for Finance, Transformation and Development, Health & Family Welfare, and PWD, Government of Assam, calls on smt @nsitharaman (sic)” which meant the minister had to meet Himanta Biswa Sarma, Minister, Government of Assam.
Other popular faces that remained absent for the polls include Congress Member of Parliament from Bengaluru Rural D K Suresh, Congress Member of Legislative Council Raghu Achar and Congress MP Jairam Ramesh.
Also, two JDS councillors, including Manjula Narayanaswamy of Laggere ward and Devadas of BTM Layout ward boycotted the elections.
Although they marked the attendance, the duo did not vote for anybody.
But last year during the mayoral elections, of 259 eligible voters, including corporators, MLAs, MLCs and MPs from Bengaluru, 253 voters were present. Six voters, including the then defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and the minister for chemical and fertiliser Ananth Kumar from the BJP, and Shivajinagar MLA R Roshan Baig were absent.
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