3 Assembly seats face bypolls as MLAs turn MPs

Mangalore Today News Network

Bangalore, May 19, 2014:  As many as three legislative assembly seats in Karnataka will require fresh polls over the coming days to elect new legislators on account of MLAs being elected to Parliament in the course of the Lok Sabha polls.

The Shikharipura constituency of former BJP CM B S Yeddyurappa is among the three where a bypoll will be needed to elect a new candidate in the light of Yeddyurappa being sent to Parliament from Shimoga constituency.

Earlier, Shimoga was represented by Yeddyurappa’s son B Y Raghavendra, who along with the former CM and his second son B Y Vijayendra is facing CBI prosecution and crime money attachment proceedings of the Enforcement Directorate for alleged role in a Rs 40 crore scam.

One of Yeddyurappa’s sons or his trusted aides are expected to take over the mantle of representing pocket borough of the former CM who is in the reckoning to be a minister in the Narendra Modi government in New Delhi.

Prakash Hukkeri, the sugar minister in the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government and an MLA from Chikkodi-Sadalga, is in a piquant situation after being elected to LS from Chikkodi.

Hukkeri, who contested reluctantly in the polls after being pushed by CM Siddaramaiah, now has to choose if he would continue as a minister of considerable clout in the Karnataka government or sit in opposition among 44 Congress MPs in Parliament. Either way, a byelection would need to be conducted in the Chikkodi LS or Chikkodi-Sadalga Assembly constituency.

The third politician whose elevation to the LS will necessitate a bypoll is BJP’s B Sreeramulu who has been elected from the Bellary reserved constituency. While Sreeramulu had quit as the Bellary MLA ahead of the poll to join the BJP abandoning his experiment with the creation of the BSR Congress, the vacuum created in the Bellary Rural assembly seat on account of Sreeramulu’s resignation is yet to be filled.

Fresh elections to Bellary Rural will also need to be conducted barely a year after the assembly polls in the state.