The BJP is all set to retain power in the District Central Cooperative Bank as the counting of votes revealed that candidates backed by the ruling party have won majority seats.
Results of the elections to the DCC Bank Board of Directors that had attracted State-wide attention have revealed that BJP-supported candidate won two of the three seats that went to the polls. As many as 10 of the 13 candidates, who were elected unopposed last week, were supported by the BJP. Votes were cast and counted at the BK Model High School near the Head Post Office in Belagavi on Friday.
Congress MLA Anjali Nimbalkar lost to BJP-supported MES candidate Arvind Patil in Khanapur. Mr. Patil polled 27 votes out of the 52 from the primary agriculture cooperative societies in Khanapur taluk against Dr. Nimbalkar.
Just as his results were being announced, he left for the Inspection Bungalow to meet district in-charge Minister and BJP leader Ramesh Jarkiholi. He said that he had come to seek the blessings of the senior leader and declined to comment on reports that he would join the BJP.
However, Mr. Ramesh Jarkiholi and Deputy Chief Minister Laxman Savadi have declared that Mr. Patil would soon join the BJP. Mr. Savadi, who was elected unopposed as a bank director from Athani, spent some time at the polling centre on Friday. He told journalists that Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa had approved of plans of inducting Mr. Patil into the BJP.
The lone Congress-supported candidate was Krishna Angolkar who won from the wool sector constituency defeating the BJP-backed Gajanan Kolli. Mr. Angolkar is said to be a follower of KPCC working president Satish Jarkiholi. Three other candidates who won unopposed are also said to be supporters of Mr. Satish Jarkiholi.
Srikanth Dhavan, supported by the BJP, defeated Bheemappa Belavanaki in Ramdurg taluk constituency.
With this, the former MP and incumbent chairman of the bank Ramesh Katti is all set to resume his role in the prime lending agency in the district. He has already been chairman for nearly 21 years.
The elections are supposed to be non-political. But parties regularly support some candidates, though they do not nominate their candidates.
Voting for the election to the Board of Directors of the bank began on a brisk note earlier in the day. Officers of the Department of Cooperation, who supervised the elections, said that around 45 % votes were polled till 1 p.m.
The police had blocked the road in front of the Post Office, to regulate the movement of people in front of the polling centre.
The bank has an overwhelming number of Lingayats. There is no provision for reservation of seats in the Board of Directors and there is no member from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes or minority communities among them.
Kannada and Marathi-speaking Jains, who form a significant portion of the district population and who have heading the cooperative institutions in the district, have no representation in the DCC Bank.
As many as 14 of the directors are from the Lingayat community. Mr. Patil belongs to the Maratha community and Mr. Angolkar belongs to the Kuruba community.
DCC Bank polls had gathered widespread public interest for several reasons, including the BJP backing Mr. Patil, an MES leader, for bringing together political rivals Mr. Savadi and the Katti and the Jarkiholi brothers and for the Congress managing to place four of its loyalists on the board. They had also become an issue of prestige for the Katti family whose patriarch Umesh Katti has been overlooked in the formation of the State Cabinet despite being elected nine times.
