Bangalore, August 18: An estimated 60 per cent of the 10.10 lakh voters exercised their franchise today in the bypolls for five assembly seats in Karnataka in which the ruling BJP has gone all out to make inroads into the opposition base. A total of 71 candidates are in the fray in Govindarajanagar, Chennapatna, Ramanagara, Kollegal and Chitapur, the latter two reserved constituencies.
Housing Minister V Somanna, who resigned from the Congress and as an MLA before joining BJP, is seeking re-election from Govindarajanagar. Actor C P Yogeshwar had also quit Congress to join BJP on ticket of which he unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls after resigning as MLA from Chennapatna.
Chitapur, Kollegal and Ramanagar seats fell vacant after M Mallikarjun Kharge, now Union Minister for Labour and Employment, Dhruvanarayana (Cong) and JD-S leader H D Kumaraswamy resigned their assembly seats after becoming Lok Sabha MPS. The BJP presently has a strength of 114 MLAs in the 224-member House. Kharge”s son Priyanka is contesting from Chitapur.
Of the five seats for which bypolls were held today, Congress had held four seats– Govindarajanagar, Kollegal, Chitapur and Chennapatna — and JD-S Ramanagara. Counting of votes would be taken up on August 21.
—PTI–