RS polls today; Congress moves MLAs into hotel

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The ruling Congress party moved its Karnataka MLAs to a hotel in Bengaluru on Monday a day ahead of Rajya Sabha elections for four seats amid fears of cross voting.

They have been put up at the Hilton Hotel in Thanisandra. A Congress Legislature Party meeting too took place at the venue.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah chaired the meeting and Deputy CM and Karnataka Congress chief DK Shivakumar was also present.

Shivakumar confirmed that a mock voting session will take place at the hotel where the MLAs will also spend the night before heading out to the voting venue, Vidhana Soudha, on Tuesday.

Votes can be cast from 9 am to 4 pm. Counting begins at 5 pm. “From our side, there’ll be no cross-voting,” Shivakumar told mediapersons.

Preferential voting to take place There are four Upper House seats up for grabs but five candidates have been fielded necessitating a preferential voting system.

In case of four candidates, there would have been first-past-the-post voting wherein there would be a solitary vote and the candidate with the highest votes would win.

However, in a preferential voting system, a voter would have to cast four votes in order of preference. The candidate to attain a cumulative 50 per cent vote first would be declared the winner.

Congress retained incumbent MPs Naseer Hussain and GC Chandrashekhar whose terms expire on April 2. However, they have replaced L Hanumanthaiah with Delhi man Ajay Maken.