Bangalore: Congress majority in Assembly, but still a minority in Council
Bangalore, May 12 (DHNS): The Congress is all set to form the government, but the party is still a minority in the Legislative Council with the Opposition BJP having an upper hand with 40 seats in the 75-member House.
The Congress has 17 members in the Council, the JD(S) 12, there is one independent and there are five vacancies. The Congress will have to tread cautiously as the Opposition BJP can strike down any motion or bill in the Council as the numbers are in its favour. The Congress can always get the defeated bills passed again in the Assembly, but will have to bear the embarrassment of a ruling party losing on the floor of a House.
At the same time, there has been political churning in the Council during the last few months in the run-up to the Assembly polls. Three members - Mohan Limbikai, Shivaraj Sajjanar and K R Mallikarjunappa - quit the BJP to join the KJP. All the three contested unsuccessfully in the Assembly polls. Another member Sashil Namoshi quit the BJP for not being given a ticket from Gulbarga South. He too contested unsuccessfully in the polls on a JD(S) ticket.
With these five members resigning, the Election Commission will announce bypolls to fill four seats in the next few weeks. These include one graduates’ constituency, one from the Legislative Assembly and two from local bodies’ constituencies.
But, even if the BJP loses all the four seats, the party will be ahead of the Congress in terms of the numbers. The BJP numbers may dwindle little more in the days to come if the disqualification petition by the party against four of its members - Mumtaz Ali Khan, B J Puttaswamy, M D Lakshminarayana and Bharati Shetty- is accepted by the Council Chairman.
The Congress predicament in the Upper House will ease a bit in June 2014, when seven members elected by the Legislative Assembly, including former chief minister D V Sadananda Gowda and M C Nanaiah (JD-S), and five nominated MLCs, including S R Leela, Doddarangegowda and M R Doreswamy, retire. The Congress can nominate all five members and can bag five of the seven seats from the Assembly constituency based on its present strength in the Lower House.
Sadananda Gowda is likely to be appointed as the Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council, BJP sources said.
In case the JD (S) becomes the prime Opposition in the Assembly, the BJP may appoint Suresh Kumar as the floor leader, though Jagadish Shettar is senior to him.
* BJP: 40
* Congress: 17
* JD(S): 12
* Independent: 1
* Vacant: 4
* Chairman: 1
* Total: 75