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Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday cast his vote for the high-octane Rajya Sabha election.
The voting for four Rajya Sabha seats of the state began on Tuesday morning. Speaking to the reporters here, the Karnataka CM alleged that the BJP tried to poach Congress MLAs. "They (BJP) have also fielded candidates to win the elections, but for the 5th candidate they required 45 votes, do they have 45 votes? How will they win without numbers? Though they know that they don't have numbers they fielded Kupendra Reddy and they tried to poach our MLAs, that's why an FIR has been lodged against them," Siddaramaiah said. "I'm sure all our 3 candidates are going to win," he added. Five candidates -- Ajay Maken, Syed Naseer Hussain and G C Chandrasekhar (all Congress), Narayansa Bandage (BJP) and Kupendra Reddy (JD(S)) -- are in the fray. In Karnataka, three MPs from the Congress and one from the BJP are retiring and the outcome after the elections will be the same. As numbers stand in the Karnataka Assembly, the Congress is assured of three seats, and the BJP of one. Each Rajya Sabha candidate needs at least 45 votes in the 224-MLA Karnataka Assembly to win a Rajya Sabha seat from the state. The Congress with 135 MLAs has the exact number to elect its three candidates, Ajay Maken, Nasir Hussain and G C Chandrashekhar while the BJP has 66 MLAs, which means it can easily get its main candidate, party worker Narayansa Bhandage, elected. Combined with the 19 JD(S) MLAs, the BJP-JDs second candidate Kupendra Reddy will need to get support of three Independents and get at least three Congress MLAs to cross-vote if he wants to win. JD-S leader Kupendra Reddy, fielded as the fifth candidate by the NDA on Tuesday refuted the claims of the Congress of threatening its MLAs to cast votes in his favour, saying that his parties in NDA have not sought any favour from anyone. "Most probably cross voting will happen...If we threatened someone or asked for votes, they (Congress) should have complained to the Election Commission. We did not ask for votes from anybody..." Reddy said. (ANI)
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