Raksha Ramaiah elected K'taka Youth Congress president

Bengaluru: Raksha Ramaiah, son of former minister Seetharam, was election president of Karnataka Youth Congress while former student leader Manjunath was elected vice president.

Shanthinagar MLA NA Haris's son Mohammed Haris Nalapad was disqualified despite polling the highest number of votes.

The candidates were backed by three camps — one headed by leader of opposition Siddaramaiah, one by State Congress president DK Shivakumar and another by BK Haripra, former Union minister KH Muniyappa and Rajya Sabha member GC Chandrashekhar.

Mohammed Nalapad won the election beating his closest rival by more than 7,000 votes on Thursday. However, in a turn of events, Nalappad was declared unfit and disqualified for his role as the prime accused in the 2018 Farzi Cafe bar brawl case, where Nalapad was arrested for allegedly assaulting a man in a Bengaluru pub. The same year in June, he was granted conditional bail. He has also been charge-sheeted in the case. Nalapad is also the Bengaluru unit IYC president.

"For his involvement in the case, the party was unsure of him contesting while the FAME decision on this was pending. But he wanted to contest anyway and the party gave him a conditional approval to file nomination that the decision of FAME would be final. By the time results were out, he was disqualified. So we went by that," said a source in the Congress party.

According to the sources, Nalapad was backed by Congress president D K Shivakumar while Ramaiah was supported by leader of the opposition, Siddaramaiah and others. Shivakumar's request to back Harris was overlooked by Siddaramaiah, a person aware of the developments said. The power play between the two sides led to a money splurge to win the poll, he added.

Raksha Ramiah, who came second, won 57271 votes. Ramaiah is the son of former minister MR Seetharam. The elections were held on January 12 to the post that fell vacant in March 2020.