Bengaluru, 26 Feb

The Congress on Monday shifted all its MLAs to a hotel ahead of the biennial election to fill four vacancies from Karnataka in Rajya Sabha apparently to keep the flock together. Five candidates -- Ajay Maken, Syed Naseer Hussain and GC Chandrasekhar (all Congress), Narayansa Bandage (BJP) and Kupendra Reddy (JD(S)) -- are in the fray. All parties have issued whips to the MLAs, who are the voters in Tuesday's poll, amid apprehensions of cross-voting.

The Congress has 134 MLAs, the BJP has 66, JD (S) 19, while others account for four.

Of the four others, the Congress claims the support of two independents and Darshan Puttanaiah from Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha, and is confident of winning three seats. Interestingly, the fourth one - G Janardhana Reddy (Kalyana Rajya Pragathi Paksha) met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday.

The Rajya Sabha election scene in Karnataka heated up after the BJP-JD(S) combine fielded its second candidate (Kupendra Reddy), even though the alliance had the strength to win only one out of the four seats.

According to official sources, each candidate has to get 45 votes to win, if there are only four candidates in the fray, but in the case of more candidates, then preference votes kick in.

The election is necessitated due to the retirement of Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekar from BJP, and Congress' Chandrashekar, L Hanumanthaiah and Hussain, on 2 April, after the expiry of six-year term.