Bengaluru: The voting for 7 vacant Legislative Council seats from the Karnataka Assembly began at the Vidhana Soudha here this morning.
While the ruling Congress has fielded 5 candidates, the Opposition BJP has fielded 2 candidates and its coalition partner, the JD(S), in one. The vacancies have been caused by the retirement of 7 members whose tenure would end on June 30.
The voting, which began at 9 am, will continue till 4 pm, following which the counting of votes will be taken up at 5 pm and the results announced later this evening.
The Congress has fielded B.K. Hariprasad (KPCC President), Thippannappa Kamaknoor, P.V. Mohan, B.S. Shivanna (Malavalli Shivanna) and Vinay Karthik. Lingaraj Patil and Raghu R. Kautilya are the BJP candidates, while the JD(S) has fielded Govindaraju as its candidate.
The vacancies are due to the outgoing members Govindaraju, Naseer Ahmed, MTB Nagaraj, Pratap Simha Nayak, Thippannappa Kamaknoor, Sunil Vallyapure and B.K. Hariprasad.
The Congress has re-nominated KPCC President B.K. Hariprasad and Thippannappa, while three other party candidates are fresh faces.
While the Congress is expected to comfortably win 4 seats and the BJP in two seats, based on their numerical strength in the Assembly, the fight is between Vinay Karthik of the Congress, who is a close associate of Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar and Govindaraju of the JD(S) for the seventh seat.
Though the Congress is short of the required numbers to win its fifth seat, the party is going all out to woo the unattached and independent members.
The JD(S) on its part, which is well short of the required numbers, too is doing its best, appealing the MLAs to cast their ‘Conscience’ vote in favour of its candidate Govindaraju, who has been re-nominated by the party.
Each candidate is required to win a minimum of 28 votesfor victory.
In the 224-member Karnataka Assembly, the ruling Congress has 134 MLAs, the BJP – 62, JD(S) – 18, Karnataka Rajya Pragati Paksha and Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha one each, 3 unattached members, 2 independents and the Speaker, while two seats are vacant (Dharwad, where Congress MLA Vinay Kulkarni has been disqualified following his conviction in a murder case and Hiriyur, that has fallen vacant due to the demise of Congress Minister D. Sudhakar).
Ahead of the voting, BJP MLAs met at the Party Legislature Office in Vidhana Soudha this morning.
The Congress and the JD(S) had moved its MLAs to two different resorts two days ago to prevent any possibility of poaching by opponent parties. The MLAs of these two parties are arriving in batches separately to cast their ballots.
This post was published on June 18, 2026 7:30 pm