Horatti makes it six times in a row as MLC

Former minister Basavaraj Horatti further improved his record of being elected to the Karnataka Legislative Council. He has been elected from the West Teachers’ Constituency for a sixth term in succession. However, the victory did not come easily this time and he had to wait till the third round to emerge victorious.

The elections were held on June 21 and the counting of votes took place on Saturday. Returning officer and Dharwad deputy commissioner Darpan Jain announced the election of Basavaraj Horatti.

Horatti, who was in the fray as Janata Dal (S) nominee, trounced his nearest rival R M Kuberappa of the BJP by a margin of over 2,000 votes. While Horatti secured 6,504 votes after the third round of counting, Kuberappa polled 4,493 votes. S V Sankanur who was an independent candidate came third with 3,277 votes.

In all 13,988 voters had caste their votes of which 637 were treated as invalid.

Horatti should have secured 6,677 votes to win and get elected in the first round. However, he could manage only 5,900 votes while Kuberappa secured 3,800 followed by Sankanur 3,215. Congress nominee T Ishwar polled 414 votes. In the second round Horatti increased his tally to 5,990 while Kuberappa tally stood at 3,857 and Sankanur’s at 3,277. Since Horatti still fell short of the quota the third round of counting was taken up and Horatti got 574 and Kuberappa 636 votes.

Horatti has been representing the West Teachers’ Constituency since 1980 without break. He had trounced K Mallappa (1980), R K Koppar (1986), K B Raichur (1992), Shivaputra Itagi (1998) and R M Kuberappa (2004) in the previous elections.

The election had generated a lot of interest among the teachers and political parties as the ruling BJP had taken it as a matter of prestige. After tasting victory in the election to West Graduates’ constituency it had eyed the teachers’ constituency. In a bid to end Horatti’s run, chief minister B S Yeddyurappa had led the campaign for his party. However, confusion over selection of the candidate proved costly for the BJP.

The party leaders had earlier indicated that S V Sankanur would be its candidate and he had started campaigning claiming to be BJP nominee. However bowing to pressure from a section in the party, BJP announced Kuberappa as its nominee. This led to Sankanur who was once a close aide of Horatti and later turned foe contesting the poll as an independent. Sankanur’s presence in the fray made things difficult for both Horatti and Kuberappa.

While Sankanur ate into the vote bank of Horatti, he also cut Kuberappa’s votes as he bagged votes that would otherwise have gone to the BJP.