By Admin 
In the first electoral battle in Karnataka after DK Shivakumar became the Chief Minister, the ruling Congress on Thursday (June 18, 2026) won five of the seven Legislative Council seats, while the opposition BJP won two. Official sources gave this information. According to sources, ‘cross-voting’ was done by MLAs of both BJP and JDS parties as Congress candidates got more votes than expected. Members of the Karnataka Assembly voted in the elections held at Vidhana Soudha. Eight candidates were in the fray for seven seats.
These candidates were in the election field
The candidates contesting the elections include Congress’ Thippanappa Kamkanur, PV Mohan, BK Hariprasad (State Congress President), Shivanna BS, Vinay Karthik Prakash, BJP’s Lingaraj Patil and Raghu R and JDS’s Govindaraju. All five Congress candidates and two BJP candidates won while JDS’s Govindaraju faced defeat.
There was a need to hold this election because the tenure of seven members of the Legislative Council is going to end on June 30. These include Congress’s Naseer Ahmed, Tippanappa and BK Hariprasad, BJP’s N. Nagaraju (MTB), Pratap S. Hero K. And Sunil Vallayapur and Govindaraju of JDS.
DK Shivakumar denies cross voting claim
Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar on Thursday dismissed the apprehensions of possible cross-voting in the Legislative Council elections and said that Congress has not made any special strategy for this and he has full faith in the discretion of the MLAs participating in the voting. He said that since there is a secret voting system, it is not appropriate to speculate about cross voting right now. He said, ‘We do not want to be involved in cross voting nor do we have any knowledge about it. This is an election with secret ballot.
He said that he had been holding meetings with the MLAs for the last two days, but the purpose was not for political management but to explain the voting process properly. He said that the preference based voting system is quite complex and this time around 60 to 70 MLAs have been elected for the first time. In such a situation, even a small mistake can make the ballot paper invalid.
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