The Karnataka defectors. The BJP has named 13 of the 16 defected former Congress and JD-S legislators as candidates for the 15 Assembly by-elections to be held across Karnataka on December 5, hours after they joined the ruling party here, a party official said on Thursday.
“Of the 17 disqualified rebel MLAs, 16 joined our party earlier in the day barring Roshan Baig. The B-form has been given to 13 of them and to our former city corporator M. Sharavana to contest the by-elections to fill the vacancies caused by their resignations in mid-July,” BJP’s Karnataka unit spokesman G. Madhusudan said.
Sharavana will contest from the high-profile Shivajinagar Assembly constituency in central Bengaluru as the BJP did not allow seven-time former Congress lawmaker Roshan Baig to join the party along with 16 others.
“Of the 13 named, 10 belonged to the Congress and 3 to the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S). The party’s candidate for the 15th Assembly segment (Ranebennur) will be finalised soon although R. Shankar, who resigned as an Independent in July and joined the party, has not been given the ticket,” the official said.
The candidates and the Assembly seats they will contest are Mahesh Kumathalli (Athani), Srimantha Gouda Patil (Kagwad), Ramesh Jarikholi (Gokak), Shivram Hebbar (Yellapur), Anand Singh (Vijayanagara), K. Sudhakar (Chikkaballapur), Bharathi Basavaraj (K.R. Pura), S.T. Somashekar (Yeshvanthapura) and M.T.B Nagaraj (Hoskote) –all ex-Congress MLAs — and K. Gopalaiah (Mahalakshmi Layout), K.C. Narayana Gowda (Krishnarajpet) and A.H. Vishwanath (Hunsur) — all ex-JD-S MLAs.
Though two more Assembly segments — Maski in the state’s northwest Raichur district and Mahalakshmi — are also vacant, by-elections to them have been withheld due to litigation in the Karnataka High Court over their results in the May 2018 Assembly polls.
The counting of votes will take place on December 9.
With 104 legislators, excluding the Speaker, the ruling party has to win at least 9-10 seats to have a simple majority in the 225-member Assembly with 113 as the halfway mark and save its government.
The opposition Congress on October 31 announced the names of 8 candidates and is yet to name candidates for the remaining seats.
The JD-S, which is also in the fray, has announced the names for 10 seats so far.
Sixteen disqualified Karnataka Assembly legislators, barring Roshan Baig, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday, following the Supreme Court judgement on Wednesday.
“The ex-MLAs visited the Karu Malleshwara temple in Malleshwaram and joined the BJP at 11 a.m. on Thursday,” Vanamacharya from the BJP said.
Karnataka Chief Minister B. S. Yeddiyurappa welcomed the ex-MLAs into BJP fold, handing over a party flag and promising a bright future with the BJP, said Vanamacharya.
Yeddiyurappa thanked the disqualified legislators for providing Karnataka a stable BJP government, before leaving to Tumkur to attend a cooperative society meeting.
Except for Roshan Baig, the other ex-MLAs who joined the BJP included Ramesh Jarkiholi, Mahesh Kumtahalli, Anand Singh, Shrimanth Patil, Pratap Gouda Patil, B.C. Patil, Shivaram Hebbar, S.T. Somshekar, Byrati Basavaraju, Muniratna K. Sudhakar, A.H. Vishwanath, Narayana Gowda and K. Gopalaiah, R. Shankar and MBT Nagaraj.
Vanamachary said it is not yet clear why Roshan Baig has not joined the party, hinting that the Centre has asked for more time to induct him.
The Election Commission announced bypolls in two Rajya Sabha seats in Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, which fell vacant recently, on December 12.
The Karnataka seat fell vacant after Congress member K.C. Ramamurthy resigned to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while the Uttar Pradesh seat fell vacant after Samajwadi Party member Tazeen Fatma resigned to contest the Rampur Assembly bypoll, the seat once represented by her husband Azam Khan.
Khan had resigned from the Rampur Assembly seat after he won the Lok Sabha polls.
Ramamurthy’s tenure was to end on June 30, 2022, while the term of Fatma was up to end on November 25, 2020.
The vote count for the two seats will take place on December 12 after the polling concludes.