Bengaluru: Candidates of all the three major political parties in Karnataka filed their nominations for the June 29 Legislative Council polls on Thursday, the last date to do so.
While the BJP has fielded four candidates, Congress two and JD(S) one respectively for the biennial elections to seven seats of the legislative council to be elected by the MLAs.
The election is necessitated as the term of seven MLCs- Naseer Ahmed, Jayamma, M C Venugopal, N S Bose Raju, H M Revanna (all Congress), T A Sharavana (JD(S)) and independent D U Mallikarjuna- will end June 30.
Based on their strength in the assembly, while BJP is in a position to win four out of seven seats, Congress can win two and JD(S) one. Twenty-eight valid votes of MLAs are required for each candidate to win.
Four BJP candidates MTB Nagaraj, R Shankar, Sunil Vallyapure and Pratap Simha Nayak filed their nominations today, after the party high command announced their names late last night.
Nagaraj and Shankar had played a key role in the formation of the BJP government after the coup that led to the collapse of Congress-JD(S) coalition, they had subsequently defected to the saffron party.
While Nagaraj lost the byelections held later, Shankar did not contest in exchange for a Council berth promise.
Among the other BJP candidates- Vallyapure is a former MLA from Chincholi and had given up his seat abiding by the party decision to field Avinash Jadhav; while Nayak is a senior party worker and had served as Dakshina Kannada district president.
Sources said while Shankar and Vallyapure have been given MLC tickets as they had given up their Assembly seats, Nagraj was considered as he had faced a defeat during the bypolls because party MP B N Bachhe Gowda's son Sharath contested as a rebel.