New Delhi: IT industry veteran NR Narayana Murthy and his wife Sudha Murty were among the early voters who cast their ballot in the Karnataka Assembly polls on Wednesday. Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty voted at Jayanagar in Bengaluru, where Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also voted.

Urging people to come out and vote, Sudha Murty said, “I will not ask you who you will vote for or why you vote, because everyone has their own opinion and decision, but everyone should vote. We vote in every election.”

The author-philanthropist said that she always tells the youth to come and vote because then they will have the ‘power to talk’.

“Without voting you do not have any power to talk,” she told reporters.

On people who don’t vote, the Padma Bhushan awardee said that only those who ‘don’t have patriotism’ do such things. 

“Please look at us. We are oldies but we get up at 6 o’clock, come here and vote. Please learn from us. Voting is a sacred part of democracy,” she added.

Infosys founder Narayana Murthy said that it is the responsibility of the elders to sit down with youngsters and advise them why voting is important.

“That’s what my parents did,” he said.

Urging people to exercise their franchise, he said the people do not have the right to ‘criticise’ the governance if they do not cast their votes.

Voting for the high-stakes Assembly elections in Karnataka began at 7 AM on Wednesday with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) eyeing to script history by retaining its southern citadel while a combative Congress eyes a comeback ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Polling is being held for 224 seats in what is being seen mainly as a three-cornered contest between the BJP, the Congress and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular).

The electoral fate of top guns including Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Congress veterans Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar and JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy among others will be sealed during the day-long exercise.

A total of 5,31,33,054 electors are eligible to cast their vote in 58,545 polling stations across the state, where 2,615 candidates are in the fray. Among the electors, 2,67,28,053 are male, 2,64,00,074 female and 4,927 “others”, while among the candidates 2,430 are male, 184 female and one from third gender.

The counting of polled votes will be taken up on May 13.

Earlier in the 2018 Karnataka Assembly polls, BJP emerged as the single largest party by winning 104 seats, followed by Congress at 80, and JD(S) at 37. There was one independent member, while BSP and Karnataka Pragnyavantha Janata Party (KPJP) had one legislator each.

With no party having a clear majority and as the Congress and JD(S) were trying to forge an alliance, BJP’s BS Yediyurappa staked a claim and formed the government. However, it had to resign within three days ahead of the trust vote, unable to muster the required numbers. Subsequently, the Congress-JD(S) alliance formed the government with Kumaraswamy as CM, but the wobbly dispensation collapsed in 14 months, as 17 legislators resigned and came out of the ruling coalition, and defected to BJP facilitating the party coming back to power.

In the bypolls held subsequently in 2019, the ruling party won 12 out of 15 seats.

In the outgoing Assembly, BJP has 116 MLAs, followed by the Congress at 69, and JD(S) — 29. There is also one BSP lawmaker, two Independents, one Speaker, and six vacant seats (following deaths and resignations to join other parties ahead of polls).

Source : Zee News