Eight vacant berths in Upper House; Hundreds of aspirants in Congress

Shyam Sundar Vattam | NT

Bengaluru: The number of aspirants in the Congress Party is increasing day by day for the eight vacancies in the State Legislative Council. The aspirants, mainly those who were denied tickets in the recently-held Assembly polls and those loyal to the Congress Party are lobbying with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister D.K.Shivakumar to consider them for berths in the Upper House.

Of eight posts, six vacancies can be filled up easily but an election needs to be held to the other two posts. The Congress has to nominate N.S. Bhoseraj who has been inducted into the Council of Ministers even though he was neither a member of the State Legislative Assembly nor the Legislative Council. The tussle is for the other five vacancies. Seeing the number of aspirants, the state leaders are in a fix as they don’t know who to nominate to the Upper House.

According to a senior Congress leader, the process of appointment to the Legislative Council is likely to begin after the conclusion of the Budget session which starts on July 3. The vacancies are due to the resignation of BJP’s Ayanur Manjunath and Puttanna and the completion of the tenure of Lakshman Savadi, Baburao Chinchansur, R.Shankar, P.R. Ramesh, and Mohan Kondajji.

The six-year tenure of C.M.Lingappa will end on June 8. As Puttanna still had four years left at the time of tendering his resignation to join the Congress Party and contest from Rajajinagar constituency in the recently-held Assembly elections, he may be re-nominated. Similarly, Chinchansur had a one-year tenure and he too would be nominated again because he belongs to the Koli community, a microscopic backward classes community.

As R. Shankar tendered his resignation though he had more than two years left of his Council tenure, former minister, H.M.Revanna, a Kuruba and close associate of Siddaramaiah, would be given a chance. Boseraju would be nominated to the Legislative Council in place of Savadi who still had three years left of his tenure when he quit. Ultimately, the candidates would be decided by Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar.

The BJP’s Ayanur Manjunath had represented the Karnataka Western Graduates Constituency but resigned when he had ten months left of his tenure. But the election is unlikely to be held as the revision of the electoral roll would take six months and even after the election, the new member would hardly get four months. So, the Election Commission may conduct the biennial election to that post something early next year.

The Congress Party is toying with the idea of nominating former deputy mayor Puttaraju in place of Kondajji Mohan, a Lingayat. In place of Ramesh, Venugopal who belongs to Savita Samaja may find a berth. The place of CM Lingappa may go to Raghunandan Ramanna, a former member of KPSC and a close confidant of D.K.Shivakumar.