Karnataka civic polls: Vote counting begins

The counting of votes for 105 Urban local Bodies (UlBs) across Karnataka began at 8 a.m. on Monday.

The results of the civic polls, which took place on August 31, are expected later in the day or early Tuesday, a poll official said.

Polling took place across the 2,633 wards of the state, spread over 29 city municipalities, 53 town municipalities and 23 town panchayats and in 135 wards of the three city corporations.

A record average of 67.5 per cent voter turnout was registered across the state for the civic polls.

Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were used for polling in all the wards.

A total of 36 lakh voters were registered in the UlB wards and 13.33 lakh in the three towns of Mysuru, Shivamogga and Tumakuru.

In all, 8,340 candidates, including 2,306 from the Congress, 2,203 from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and 1,397 from the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) are in the fray for the UlBs, while 814 contested from the city corporations, including 135 from Congress, 130 from BJP and 129 from JD-S.

In the event of a party not getting majority on its own in the election, the Congress and JD-S have decided to forge a post-poll alliance to keep BJP out of power, similar to the May 12 state assembly elections which threw up a hung verdict.

In the 2013 UlB elections held in 4,976 seats, the Congress had won 1,960 seats, while BJP and JD-S had won 905 seats each, while Independents bagged the remaining 1,206 seats.