Agencies
Bangalore, Mar 29: In the election to four seats of Rajya Sabha from the State Legislative Assembly held yesterday, the results were on expected lines.
While the independent candidate and Jnanpith Awardee Prof. U.R. Anantha Murthy lost, the other four candidates namely independent candidate Rajeev Chandrashekhar supported by Janata Dal (S) and Bharatiya Janata Party, JD (S) party candidate M. Rajashekharamurthy, Congress candidate K. Rehman Khan and BJP candidate K.B. Shanappa won.
The four winning contestants secured 53, 50, 49 and 47 votes respectively with 44.6 votes as the minimum needed for victory. The losing contestant Prof. Anantha Murthy secured just 24 votes.
Whip
The victory path was apparently easy for Rajeev Chandrashekhar as three members of Janata Dal (S) identifying themselves under All India Progressive Janata Dal (AIPJD) including former Deputy Chief Minister Siddharamaiah were not issued the whip by the Janata Dal (S) Legislature party leader.
The remaining five members of AIPJD were issued the whip.
Due to the fact that the Congress Party, BJP and JD (S) issued the whip asking their members to cast the stipulated number of votes in favour of the respective party candidates and to cast the excess votes in favour of the independent candidate Rajeev Chandrashekhar, the four winning candidates scored easy victory.
Whip was not issued to Siddharamaiah, Dr. H.C. Maha-devappa and B.R. Patil. However, the five members belonging to the same faction of the JD(S) as Siddharamaiah, namely K.M. Krishnamurthy, H.Y. Meto, M. Mahadev, M.K. Somashekhar and K. Venkatesh were issued the whip.
The three JD(S) members, namely Siddharamaiah, Dr. Mahadevappa and Patil voted for Prof. Anantha Murthy. Three members of Janata Dal (U) and two of Maharashtra Ekeekarana Samithi (MES) voted in favour of Rajeev Chandrashekhar. But J.C. Madhu Swamy and Nagamani Nage Gowda voted without showing their ballots to the party observer.
As P.G.R. Sindhya of JD (S) was given the whip only to cast his first preferential vote, he cast his vote in favour of the party candidate M. Rajashekhara Murthy and the second to Rehman Khan, as shown by him (Sindhya).
Out of the total 224 members, 223 members exercised their franchise.
As the revision petition in the case of Ravikantha Patil's disqualification, is pending before the Supreme Court and yet to be decided, he did not cast his vote.
President of Karnataka Rajya Raita Sangha (KRRS) K.S. Puttannaiah, Communist Party of India (Marxist) activist G.N. Nagaraj, Sarvodaya Party leader Devanur Mahadeva and other leaders were seen canvassing in favour of Prof. Anantha Murthy outside the Vidhana Soudha.
The Congress Party reserved its 49 votes in favour of the party's official candidate Rehman Khan and gave the remaining 15 votes to Prof. Anantha Murthy.