JDS announces nominees for elections to four Karnataka Legislative Council seats

Bengaluru: With two assembly segments and four legislative council constituencies set to go for polls in weeks in Karnataka, major political parties got into election mode on Thursday with the ruling BJP holding a meeting and the JDS announcing its nominees for the upper house seats.

The election to the four legislative councils — Karnataka South-East, Bengaluru Teachers constituency, Karnataka West Graduates and Karnataka North-East Teachers will take place on October 28.

By-elections are to be held on November 3 in Sira in Tumakuru district and RR Nagar in Bengaluru Urban district. The last date of filing nomination is October 16. The ruling BJP’s core committee was convened to deliberate on the probable candidates, but no names were finalised, party sources said.

At the end of the meeting, BJP state vice president and Mahadevapura MLA Aravind Limbavali said the party central leadership would take the final call. The party set up six teams of observers to oversee and ensure victory of its nominees in these elections, he said in a statement.

The JD(S) released the list of its candidates for the council polls, necesistated by the end of tenure of sitting members. Chowda Reddy Thoopalli (Karnataka South-East), advocate A P Ranganath (Teachers constituency), Shivashankar Kallur (Karnataka West Graduates) and Timmayya S Purle (Karnataka North-East Teachers) are the nominees. Thoopalli, who retired after representing South-East, has been renominated. The Congress on the other hand has already finalised T B Jayachandra as the candidate for Sira while it is yet to take a call on RR Nagar.

Former IAS officer late D K Ravi’s wife Kusuma Ravi, Krishna Murthy, Magadi Balakrishna, Congress social media in charge Raksha Ramaiah and District Congress Committee president M Rajkumar names are doing the rounds.

Speaking to reporters here, Bengaluru Rural MP D K Suresh said some people were proposing the name of Kusuma Ravi. The MLC elections had been necessitated as the tenure of the sitting member got over on June 30 but due to the coronavirus scare and the resultant lockdown it was postponed.

The Sira seat fell vacant after sitting JD(S) member B Sathyanarayana died on August 5. The bypoll to RR Nagar is taking place due to the disqualification of then Congress MLA Munirathna last year. Munirathna, now with BJP, is one of the ticket aspirants from RR Nagar.