JD(S) may lose South Graduates’ constituency; Congress leading

Mysuru: JD(S) could lose the South Graduates’ constituency in the council with the party candidate H K Ramu trailing behind Congress and BJP on Wednesday.
While the counting of ballots polled during the election to the segment, which is spread over Mysuru, Mandya, Hassan and Chamarajanagar districts, is on, the contest has narrowed down to Congress and BJP.
Congress’ candidate Madhu Madegowda is leading as some 50% of the votes are counted with BJP candidate M V Ravishankar, posing a tough challenge to him.
The counting of first-preferential votes is likely to be completed around midnight. But given the trend, none of the candidates is likely to make it to the finishing line with first-preferential votes alone.
In the first round, 49,900 first-preference votes were counted by 6.30pm. The Congress candidate is maintaining a lead securing 15,217 votes. BJP candidate M Y Ravishankar stood second with 12,794 votes. Realising that JD(S) candidate H K Ramu was in third place, party activists started leaving the counting centre early in the evening.
One of the shockers for both BJP and Congress was invalid votes. Around 3,000 votes were rejected by the time 49,500 votes were counted. Common mistakes committed by graduate voters were affixing signature, not casting first-preference votes, casting first-preference votes for more than one candidate, and the like. In many ballot papers, the voters even requested for leadership change.
According to the data that last came in, the constituency registered 69.95% of voting. Hassan registered the highest voting percentage of 74.22 The lowest voting percentage was reported from Mysuru where 67.5% of voters cast their votes. A total of 99,304 voters cast their votes (39,359 in Mysuru and 33,053 in Mandya). The counting process started at 8am.