Nearly five months after he became chief minister, D.V. Sadananda Gowda was elected to the Legislative Council on Thursday, effectively ending the hopes of former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa from making a comeback.
Ending any illusions that Mr Yeddyurappa may have had, state party chief K.S. Eshwarappa said, “I want to congratulate chief minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda on winning the election. We will see him resign as MP so that he will be the chief minister of Karnataka for the next 16 months.”
While the results were on expected lines, out of 199 votes polled, Mr Sadananda Gowda polled 123, Congress candidate Anand Gaddadevea-ramath got 69 votes, and 7 votes — of whom four were Independents — were declared invalid.
The BJP poll managers had predicted that Mr Sadananda Gowda would get 127 votes. However, due to the high number of invalid votes including one from the BJP, Mr Gowda’s arithmetic went a little awry.
The Congress had expected to get 72 votes including support of Independent MLA B. Sreeramulu, but the Congress too fell short of the three votes it had expected to get.
But with the votes of 26 MLAs of JD(S) unavailable to either side, as they abstained from voting, the JD(S) decision in fact made it easy for the chief minister to win the seat to the Upper House.
The BJP MLA from Ron constituency, Kalakappa Bandi exhibited his votes to the chief minister before putting the ballot paper into the ballot box.
Chief electoral officer R. Manoj asked the Assembly Secretary not to consider that vote. Assembly secretary Ompraksh, rejected the vote of Mr Bandi.