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By-polls to Mandya and Bangalore Rural Lok Sabha seats will be held on Wednesday with 3.64 mil-lion voters expected to exercise their franchise at the end of a bitterly fought battle between the ruling Congress and JD-S.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has played for high stakes in the polls that was marked by a no-holds barred attack by leaders of Congress and JD-S, which has the backing of BJP for both the seats.
The bypoll was necessitated by the resignation of N Cheluvarayaswamy (Man-dya) and former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy (Bangalore Rural) who quit after being elected to the Assembly in May.
JD-S of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda has fielded Kumaraswamy's wife Anita from Bangalore Rural, and C S Puttaraju in Mandya. Leading Kannada actor Ramya is Congress candidate from Mandya and D K Suresh, brother of senior Congress leader and MLA D K Shivakumar from Bangalore Rural.
Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer Anil Kumar Jha said about sixty teams of surveillance and flying squads would be deployed for the by-elections. "Polling will begin at 8 am and end at 5 pm," he said. He said about 3.64 million voters in both parliamentary constituencies were expected to vote in 4,360 polling booths.
Jha said there would be a ban on exit poll on the date of poll. Any analysis in the preceding 48 hours is an offence under the Representation of People's Act, he added.
The Gowda belt of Mandya is a stronghold of JD-S, which won five of the eight Assembly seats in the district in the May elections. In Bangalore Rural, where Kumaraswamy had won by 130,000 votes in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress has secured the support of Samajwadi Party MLA, C P Yogeeshwara, who who reigned supreme in Channapa Assembly segment defeating Anita in May.
