Thumbs down for BJP in CMC standing committee elections

The elections for the City Municipal Committee standing committee, Madikeri, has yielded a hung result. Elections were held for 11 seats on Thursday.

The winning members are Leela Sheshamma, Tajassum, Veenakshi, Srimathi Bangera from Congress, Amin Mohisin from SDPI, Mansoor Ali, K G Peter and Sangeetha Prasanna from JD(S), P D Ponnappa, Unnikrishnan and Savitha Rakesh from BJP.

Members who were the chairpersons of the standing committees in the earlier term, K S Ramesh, A K Lakshmi, Anitha Poovaiah, I G Shivakumari from BJP, Prakash Acharya, Neema Arshad, Julekabi and H M Nandakumar from Congress, have faced defeat.

Members from both the Congress and the BJP ensured that the MPs, MLAs and MLCs from their respective parties cast their votes so that the chairpersons’ posts of the standing committees could be won. Apart from 23 members of the CMC, MP Prathap Simha, MLA Appacchu Ranjan and members of the Legislative Council Veena Acchaiah and Sunil Subramani also cast their votes.

Four out of seven members who contested from the BJP, have faced defeat. Four have lost and four have won from the Congress party. One member has won from the JD(S) and three members have won from SDPI.

As Srimathi Bangera, Veenakshi and Leela Sheshamma from the Congress and Sangeetha Prasanna from JD(S) are alleged to have been associated with other parties, speculations are on rife on who these rebel members would support for the CMC president and standing committee chairpersons posts. These four votes have become very crucial.

Going by the trends, there are possibilities of K G Peter from SDPI becoming the president of the City Municipal Council.

In order to avoid cross-voting, Congress leader Nandakumar told the members to write any number of ‘X’ marks before the name of the candidate on the ballot paper. But, the BJP members Unnikrishnan and P D Ponnappa said that only one ‘X’ mark could be written before the name of the candidate. M P Pratap Simha insisted upon the adherence to the rules. There was an exchange of words between the members. Election officer B Shubha clarified that no matter how many numbers of ‘X’ marks are mentioned, only one mark would be considered for counting.

Earlier to the elections, the members conducted a detailed discussion on the increasing traffic density in the city. There was a demand from the members to undertake measures to earmark land for scientific parking. Member Unnikrishnan suggested initiating pay parking facilities on select roads. Appacchu Ranjan opined that the new private bus stand, which has been built in the middle of the city, has aggravated the traffic issues. He, meanwhile, urged the deputy commissioner, superintendent of police and the elected representatives to find a solution to the traffic logjams.

CMC president Kaveramma Somanna and vice president T S Prakash were present.