Polling in the single seat of Rajarajeshwari Nagar as part of the 2018 Karnataka Assembly polls in Bengaluru was held peacefully on Monday, more than two weeks after the rest of the state went to polls.
The counting of votes for the seat will be done on May 31.
Brisk polling was recorded in many polling booths of the constituency with 21% voter turnout by 11am.
At the end of the day at 6pm, the Election Commission pegged the voting percentage to be 53% which is almost consistent with the average voter turnout across Bengaluru.
With this, polling is left to be held only in the Jayanagar seat in Bengaluru.
Elections were postponed in both RR Nagar and Jayanagar for different reasons while the rest of 222 seats went for the hustings on May 12 and results were declared on May 15 in a majorly peaceful election process.
Voters had a choice between a total 14 candidates, including incumbent Congress MLA Munirathna, BJP’s Muniraju Gowda and JD(S) candidate GH Ramachandra.
JD(S) patriarch and former PM HD Deve Gowda insisted that the coalition with the ruling Congress is “within Assembly and not constituency”, explaining fielding a party candidate for the seat.
Voting was postponed in the RR Nagar seat after large scale seizures of voter ID cards ahead of the polling from an apartment in the area. Police are probing the incident and has named Munirathna as an accused. The Election Commission had announced that the 9,700 odd seized voter IDs have been returned to the respective persons.
Polling in Jayanagar is set to be held on June 11 after the demise of sitting BJP MLA BN Vijay Kumar after the date of notification.
Results in the two seats are unlikely to change the political scenario of the state except for giving political parties an opportunity to claim moral victory.
After many twists and turn, the HD Kumaraswamy-led JD(S)-Congress combine won the floor test on May 25 ending the political instability in the state.