Hunsur: The 31-member Hunsur City Municipal Council (CMC) has thrown up a hung verdict as no party  managed to win the magic number of 16 seats to rule the Civic Body for the next five years.

The counting of votes that was polled on Feb.9, was taken up at 8 am at the CMC building amidst tight security. 

EVMs were used in the polling held on Sunday last and the CMC had recorded a voter turnout of a fraction over 75 percent. The results were declared within a couple of hours after the counting began this morning.

The Congress managed to win 14 seats, while JD(S) came second with 7 seats and BJP 3. Five independent candidates and two from SDPI (Social Democratic party of India) also won. 

The Congress, which was buoyant after the party candidate H.P. Manjunath won the Hunsur Assembly seat in the by-poll held on Dec.5 last, defeating nearest rival A.H. Vishwanath of the BJP by a huge margin of about 40,000 votes, failed to maintain the tempo and fell short of two seats to gain absolute majority in the 31-member CMC. 

The Congress will now have to look to the five Independents to come to power in the CMC. 

This was the first election after Hunsur Town Municipal Council (TMC) was upgraded as CMC.

List of winners

Congress: Anusha, Bhavya, Swamygowda, Devanayaka, Sameena Parvez, Sourabha Siddaraju, Manu, H.N. Ramesh, Zabiullah Khan, Ranjita Harish, Geetha Ningaraju, Manju, Shwetha Manju and                                       Priyanka Thomas.

JD(S): C. Devaraju, Sharavana, Shaheen Taj, Krishnaraja Gupta, Srinath, Rani Perumal and Radha Venkatesh.

BJP: Harishkumar, Vivekananda and Ganesh Kumaraswamy.

Independents: H.D. Asha, H.P. Satishkumar, Ramesh, Malik Pasha and Farveen Taj.

SDPI: Shameena Bano and Syed Younus.

The BJP has opened its account in the Local Body after a gap of two decades.