Mangaluru: In the standing committees’ election of the Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat held on Tuesday, November 19, the BJP won six of the seven committees (Finance, Agriculture and Industry, Education and Health and General), while the Congress managed to secure only one, Social Justice.
Earlier, a common understanding between the leaders of Congress and the BJP was used to select members of the standing committees and the seats were shared accordingly. But this time around, both the parties demanded a specific number of seats to be allotted to their respective members, necessitating an election.
Before the said polls, the Congress had demanded 12 seats, even though the BJP was the majority in the ZP standing committees. The BJP later agreed to allot 11 seats to the Congress.
All the 21 members from the BJP and 13 out of 15 members from the Congress participated in the electoral process.
Congress leaders U T Khader, Ivan D’Souza and Harish Kumar, and MLC B M Farooq from the JD(S) were absent.
BJP state president and parliamentarian Nalin Kumar Kateel, BJP district president MLA Sanjeeva Matandoor and MLA Harish Poonja also did not make it, while MLAs Vedavyas Kamath, Dr Bharath Shetty, Angara S Rajesh Naik and Umanath Kotian participated in the voting.
ZP CEO R Selvamani conducted the voting process and ZP president and vice president Meenakshi Shantigodu and Kasturi Panja, respectively, were present.
As per the reports, 44 members participated in the election, out of whom two voted for more than two member, resulting in their votes being left out of consideration.