Around 60 Percent Votes Cast in State By-polls

Bangalore, Apr 9 (IANS): Around 60 percent of close to five lakh voters Saturday cast their ballots in by-polls in three assembly constituencies of Karnataka, election authorities said.

"Polling was incident free. About 60 percent voting has been recorded," a spokesperson of the state election commission told IANS at the end of polling in Jagalur in Davangere district, Bangarpet in Kolar and Channapatna in Ramanagaram.

Results will be known only on May 13 in view of assembly polls in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala and Assam.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition Congress and the regional outfit Janata Dal-Secular are locked in a three-cornered contests for the three seats.

Winning the three seats has become a prestige issue for beleaguered Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa as the by-polls were necessitated following two Congress and one Janata Dal-Secular lawmakers quitting the seats to join the BJP.

The Congress and the JD-S campaign was focused on corruption and illegal land deal charges against Yeddyurappa.

The chief minister and the BJP are banking on 'development' in the state since the party came to power in May 2008.

The Congress held Jagalur and Bangarpet and the JD-S Channapatna.

Channapatna went to polls for the third time in three years, two of them caused by defection.

C.P. Yogeshwar won the seat as a Congress candidate in the May 2008 assembly polls but quit to join the BJP. He, however, lost to M.C. Aswath of the JD-S in the by-poll in 2009. Aswath too switched over to the BJP in October last year, necessitating a third poll in the constituency which has over 187,000 voters.

Yogeshwar is again testing his luck from the constituency as the BJP candidate.

The BJP has fielded two Congress lawmakers who joined it in October last year -- S.V. Ramachandra from Jagalur and M. Narayanaswamy from Bangarpet.