BENGALURU: Leaving nothing to chance, leaders of the ruling Congress are holding separate parleys with each independent MLA as part of their strategy to secure adequate number of votes for former IPS officer and third contestant K C Ramamurthy ahead of next week’s elections to Rajya Sabha.
Speaking to this newspaper, sources in the party disclosed that their party leaders were successful in extracting a promise about their support to the Congress candidate from three such legislators - B. R. Patil (Aland), Satish Shail (Karwar) and Ashok Kheny (Bidar) and in return assured them that their demands would be met.
While Mr Patil and Mr Shail reportedly sought Congress tickets to contest from their respective constituencies for polls to the Legislative Assembly in 2018, Mr Kheny reportedly sought protection of his business interests.
Sources added that party leaders seemed to have agreed in principle to their demands for the numbers are not adequate at this juncture. Energy minister D. K. Shivakumar, who has been deputed by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to ensure that the numbers add up on the polling day, has been working over time to convince independents and rebel JD (S) MLAs and extract a promise on their support as all their votes would be critical for the victory of Mr Ramamurthy.
At the same time, the leaders are also striving to get the Math right to help former Union ministers Oscar Fernandes and Jairam Ramesh return to Rajya Sabha as their names were among those approved by senior central leaders and included in the first list of the party.
Senior leaders Oscar Fernandes and Jairam Ramesh are likely to be allotted two or more votes than that required to win the Rajya Sabha polls by the state unit of Congress.
These extra votes would ensure that these two leaders do not suffer the ignominy of defeat as was the case with the official candidate, Iqbal Ahmed Saradagi, in elections to the Legislative Council four years ago.
Two independent candidates won at the cost of Mr Saradagi, prompting central leaders to set up a committee to probe the cause for such a fiasco. Mr Saradagi, a confidant of veteran leader M Mallikarjun Kharge, was subsequently nominated to the upper House last year.
“More than the victory of our third candidate, our first priority will be to ensure the victory of both Mr Fernandes and Mr Ramesh. We do not want to take any risk, so we are preparing a list of names of confidants of Mr Oscar Fernandes and Mr Ramesh in order to group them in one vote block and assign the respective group to each leader in order to avoid last minute confusion,” sources in the party told Deccan Chronicle.
Returning Officer gets copy of sting operation on cash-for-money
The Returning Officer for Rajya Sabha elections Karnataka will on Monday submit to the Election Commission a report along with an unedited copy of the "sting operation" that purportedly showed MLAs negotiating money deal in exchange for their votes.
"The Commission has asked for an unedited copy of the 'sting operation' I have received from one channel now. The other channel is yet to submit. "I will send a report along with the unedited copy to the Commission and Chief Electoral Officer Karnataka on Monday," Karnataka Legislative Assembly Secretary S Murthy, also the Returning Officer, told PTI.
The Returning Officer had submitted a prima facie written report to the Election Commission with some paper cuttings and clippings on the very next day after the "sting operations" were aired by two private TV news channels on Thursday.
The footage of "sting operation" by one channel showed a JD(S) MLA purportedly talking about money in crores of rupees for supporting a candidate. A parallel "sting" operation by another channel showed Congress candidate K C Ramamurthy and Independent MLAs purportedly speaking about getting increased development funds for the constituency from the government in return for votes.
