Bypolls to 3 assembly constituencies in Karnataka on February 13

Bengaluru, Jan 13: The bypolls to three assembly constituencies in Karnataka on February 13 will have political parties on their toes, with Hebbal in Bengaluru being the hotly contested one.

The Election Commission has announced bypoll dates to Hebbal, Bidar and Deodurg (in Raichur district). Polling will be on February 13 and counting of votes on February 16. Of these three, the BJP held two seats and the Congress one.

The vacancies were caused following the death of A Venkatesh Naik, who represented Deodurg, in the Bengaluru-Nanded train accident in August 2015, while Gurupadappa Nagamarapally from Bidar and R Jagadeesh Kumar from Hebbal, died due to a cardiac arrest. Hebbal, with a little over 2 lakh voters, has many from the Congress eyeing the ticket. A new constituency carved out during delimitation in 2008, it has been the BJP's domain since then. Congress sources said there are at least a dozen contenders, including three MLCs.

Congress MLCs HM Revanna, Byrathi Suresh and RV Venkatesh are lobbying for the ticket. While Revanna had a long innings till June 2020 in the council, he was a serious contender for the seat in the 2013 assembly polls.The ticket was given to Congress veteran CK Jaffer Sharief 's grandson Rahman Sharief, who lost by 5,036 votes.

The tenure of Suresh and Venkatesh in the council will end in June 2016. Suresh, who is the cousin of Congress MLA Byrathi Basavaraj, won the council seat from the legislative assembly defeating the party's official candidate Iqbal Ahmed Saradgi. He was the JD(S) sponsored candidate and upset the calculations of all parties by bagging the highest number of votes due to cross-voting.

Sources said the Congress leadership may opt for a Muslim candidate and this narrows the choice to state youth Congress president Rizwan Arshad and Sharief 's grandson. Arshad was asked to make way for Rahman Sharief in 2013. With the constituency having roughly 65,000 Muslim voters, the chances of the party giving the ticket to a Muslim, considering there was none in the recently concluded polls to 25 seats to the council from the local authorities' constituencies, are high.

The Bengaluru Karavali Samudaya, an association of people from the coastal region settled in the city , want the ticket to be given to Ravi Shankar Shetty who lost out from the same constituency in 2008. The ticket was given to Revanna, who lost to BJP's Katta Subramanya Naidu.

Meanwhile, the BJP is considering to give the ticket to Kumar's wife as it plans to cash in on the sympathy factor. Naidu is said to have asked the ticket for his daughter-in-law as he is facing court cases on land denotification.