From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network
Bengaluru, Jun 8: Barring last surprises from the ruling BJP in Karnataka, the elections to the four Rajya Sabha seats from the State Legislative Assembly scheduled to be held on June 19 promises to be uncontested.
JD(S) national president and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and senior Congress leader M Mallikarjun Kharge are the candidates from JD(S) and Congress respectively.
Chief minister B S Yediyurappa and the state BJP leaders, the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah backed BJP national president J P Nadda rejected the three names of candidates recommended from the State and announced the names of two persons Eranna Kadadi from Belagavi and Ashok Gasti from Raichur, whose names were never in the reckoning.
As June 9 is the last date for filing nomination papers and for any last-minute surprises in fielding a third candidate, all the four from the three parties should have easy sailing.
The JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda will be filing his nomination papers on Tuesday to contest in Rajya Sabha elections scheduled for June 19, while Kharge has already filed his papers on Monday.
Elections to four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka will be held on June 19. But all four candidates, including two of the BJP, are expected to be elected unanimously.
JD(S) has 34 MLAs in the Assembly while the Congress has 68 and the BJP has 117. Meanwhile, JD(S) requires the support of 10 MLAs from either BJP or Congress.
With BJP announcing the two candidates for two seats that it can win, Gowda and Kharge along with the two from BJP are expected to be elected unopposed. This will be the second entry to Rajya Sabha for the octogenarian leader, who was earlier elected to the Upper House when he became the Prime Minister in 1996.
Both the BJP candidates started their political career as ABVP activists. While 55-year-old Ashok Gasti is a BA, LLB and had served as Belagavi Zilla Panchayat president, belongs to the politically dominant Panchamasali Lingayat community, the other BJP candidate Eranna Kadadi (54), belongs to the Backward Class Kuruba community and had served as the chairman of the State Backward Classes Commission.