With 26 votes each, Congress, BJP leaders share posts in DK Zilla Panchayat

The BJP has a majority in the Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat with 21 members, yet it had to share the standing committee presidents’ posts with the Congress to avoid election.

The remaining 15 seats in the Zilla Panchayat are of the Congress although both the president and the vice president’s posts are adorned by the BJP.

It may be mentioned here that, although the BJP has 21 seats and Congress 15, when it comes to elections, the votes of the MLAs, MP, MLC and taluk panchayat presidents too are taken into account. The Congress has 7 MLAs, while the BJP has 1, both the Congress and the BJP have one MLC each (Ivan D’Souza and Capt Ganesh Karnik), 1 MP (BJP) and, among the 5 TP presidents, Congress has three and BJP has two, which puts the total at 26 votes each for Congress and BJP.

Eleventh hour

Although it appeared that the elections are imminent, the leaders decided in the last moment to elect the members unopposed and share the posts.

Usually, out of the five standing committees, the ZP president and vice president go on to become the presidents of the Standing Committee on Finance and Planning, and General Standing Committee respectively. Hence, it was decided to elect 6 members each for the two committees and 7 members each for the remaining three committees (Social Justice, Education & Health and Agriculture & Industry) were to be elected.

While 11 members each filed their papers for General Standing Committee and Standing Committee on Finance & Planning, 14 members each filed the papers for the remaining three committees.

But the leaders’ efforts in compromising yielded results and, accordingly, it was decided to part two posts of presidents of standing committees with the Congress, following which some time was given to withdraw the nominations.

Subsequently, Zilla Panchayat CEO P I Shreevidya declared the names of the members, who were elected unopposed.

As per the ‘agreement,’ the Congress will get president’s post for the Standing Committee on Agriculture & Industries and Education & Health.

Quite interestingly, all the ZP members (36), all the MLAs (8), MLCs (2), MP (1) and TP presidents (5) were present for the election.

Elected members

General Standing Committee: Mamatha D S Gatti, P Dharanendra Kumar, Janardhan Gowda, Prameela Janardhan, Mamatha M Shetty and S N Manmatha.

Standing Committee on Finance, Taxation & Planning: Vinod Kumar Bollur, K Koragappa Naik, Chandraprakash Shetty Thumbe, Namitha, Jayashree Kodandur and M Thungappa Bangera.

Standing Committee on Education & Health: Anitha Hemanath Shetty, Kamalaksha K Poojary, Manjula Madhava, U P Ibrahim, Dhanalakshmi, Harish Kanjipili and Shahul Hameed K.

Standing Committee on Agriculture & Industries: P P Vargeese Kadaba, B Padmashekar Jain, Shayana Jayanand, Soumyalatha, Rasheeda Banu, Sarvothama Gowda and K Raveendra Kambali.

Standing Committee on Social Justice: Seema, Sucharitha Shetty, Shekar Kukkedi, Vasanthi, Sujatha K P, Asha Thimmappa Gowda and Pushpalatha Balila.

Sucharitha Shetty resigns

As the DK ZP has 36 members and as only 35 members can be accommodated in the 5 standing committees, Sucharitha Shetty of the BJP decided to tender resignation to the membership of the post of DK Library Committee, so that the person left out (senior Congress Member M S Mohammed) could get a chance.

Mohammed is likely to fill the post, it is said.