From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore
Bangalore, Mar 19: A close confidant of Bellary mining lord G Janardhan Reddy and president of BSR Congress B Sriramulu, who had joined BJP recently, has formally resigned his membership of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly on Wednesday to facilitate the BJP national leadership to officially declare him as the party candidate from Bellary.
However, the merger of BSR Congress with BJP on the lines of former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa’s Karnataka Janata Party, has been put on hold due mainly to the vehement opposition from the BJP opposition leader in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj.
Sriramulu, whose name is expected to be announced anytime now by the BJP Central election committee as the candidate from Bellary Lok Sabha constituency, submitted the resignation letter to State Assembly Speaker, Kagodu Thimmappa, here on Wednesday.
The Speaker accepted the resignation with immediate effect.
Though it is mandatory to quit the Assembly seat while switching over to a different political party,
Sriramulu had not vacated his seat while re-joining the BJP on March 14 as no decision has been taken on the admission of the other three MLAs elected on BSR Congress ticket into the BJP.
However, he quit the seat without which the BJP could not have declared him as its candidate.
Sriramulu, like Yeddyurappa, has vowed to strengthen the hands of BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, the Gujrat chief minister.
Officials on poll duty told to use only vehicles assigned to them
Meanwhile, the Bangalore Rural District administration has directed all officials on poll duty to utilise vehicles assigned to them by their respective departments for monitoring election campaign and enforcement of model code of conduct as part of the measures to check electoral expenditure.
Bangalore Rural Deputy Commissioner V Shanker told reporters that the district had incurred expenditure of Rs 3.5 crore during the 2013 Legislative Assembly elections.
``We have chalked out several plans to cut down poll expenditure this time by roping in more employees of various departments and utilising department vehicles,” he said.
A sum of Rs 1 crore has already been sanctioned to the district and disbursed to tahsildars for election expenses.
Around Rs 175 crore would be required to conduct elections in 28 parliament constituencies in the State.
A total of 1032 polling booths would be set up in Bangalore rural district and 5290 personnel would be required to ensure free and fair polling on April 17.
A large number of employees of Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal Husbandry, Fisheries, Watershed, Commerce and Industries, Tourism and other less important departments would be roped in for election duty.
All the employees have been instructed to use their department official vehicles for election purpose.
However, the administration has decided to engage 146 buses, 30 mini buses of KSRTC and 185 jeeps/vans from private agencies.
Four Assembly constituencies Hoskote, Devanahalli, Doddaballapur and Nelamangala of Bangalore Rural district fall under the Chikballapur Lok Sabha constituency.
There are 7.49 lakh voters in the district. A total of 273 and 361 polling booths have been declared as hyper sensitive and sensitive polling booths in the district.