Bengaluru: Voting is underway on Monday in the biennial elections to six seats in the Karnataka Legislative Council from teachers' and graduates' constituencies.

Seventy-eight contestants are in the fray. Counting of votes will be held on June 6.

In the 75-member Upper House, the Congress has 29 members.

The polls are being held for the constituencies of Karnataka North East Graduates, Karnataka South West Graduates, Bangalore Graduates, Karnataka South-East Teachers, Karnataka South-West Teachers and Karnataka South Teachers.

These seats fell vacant following the retirement of six members.

The graduates' constituencies and teachers' constituencies have 3.63 lakh and 70,260 voters, respectively.

The Election Commission has set up 170 polling stations for the teachers' constituencies and 461 polling stations for the graduates' constituencies.

The Congress has fielded Marithibba Gowda (South Teachers constituency), K K Manjunath (South-West Teachers), Ayanur Manjunath (South-West Graduates), Chandrashekhar Patil (North-East Graduates), Ramoji Gowda (Bangalore Graduates) and D T Srinivas (South-East Teachers).

The BJP and its ally JD(S) are contesting the MLC elections together. The BJP is fighting in four constituencies and the JD(S) two.

The BJP has fielded Amarnath Patil from the Karnataka North-East Graduates constituency, Dr Dhananjay Sarji from the Karnataka South-West Graduates constituency, A Devegowda from the Bangalore Graduates' constituency and Y A Narayanaswamy from the South-East Teachers constituency.

The JD(S) candidates are K Vivekananda from the South Teachers constituency and Bhoje Gowda from the South West Teachers constituency.