Bengaluru, Nov. 2 (IANS): A total of 54.5 lakh electorate, including 27.2 lakh men and 27.3 lakh women, will vote in 6,543 polling booths across 3 Lok Sabha and two assembly constituencies of Karnataka, by-elections for which will take place tomorrow, a poll official said on Friday.
“Polling will be held from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Bellary (ST), Mandya and Shimoga parliamentary constituencies and Jamkhandi and Ramanagaram assembly segments under tight security,” an Election Commission official told IANS.
Vote counting in all the five by-elections is on November 6.
As 51,131 voters are physically challenged, the poll panel has arranged vehicles to freely ferry them for voting from their homes and drop them back.
In all 31 candidates are in the fray, including five from the opposition BJP, three from the Congress and two from the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) and 21 others as Independents or from regional outfits.
Two women, Anitha, wife of Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, and J. Shantha, sister of BJP legislator B. Sriramulu, are contesting from Ramanagaram and Bellary (reserved) seats respectively.
Sons of three former state chief ministers are locked in a triangular contest from Shimoga in Malnad region.
They are B.Y. Raghavendra, son of BJP’s state unit president B.S. Yeddyurappa, who was the party’s first chief minister in the south from 2008-11, Madhu Bangarappa, younger son of former Congress chief minister S. Bangarappa (1990-92) and Mahima Patel, son of Janata Dal-United (JD-S) chief minister J.H. Patel (1996-99).
Yeddyurappa, who won from Shimoga in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, resigned in May on getting elected to the assembly in the May 12 state elections from the Shikaripura segment.
