Collection of personal details and deletion of lakhs of voters – What is the voters’ data theft controversy in Bengaluru?

But later, the deputed field workers collected personal information of the voters – including caste, age, gender, employment, education details, Aadhar numbers, phone number, Voter ID numbers and email addresses. The INC has alleged that this data, illegally collected by the agency, has been misused. It further claimed many voters’ names were dropped from the list to facilitate BJP leaders to win elections in the city. The BBMP has said that 6.73 lakh voters’ names had been removed from the list to prevent one person from voting at multiple places.

According to police sources, the vital data carried a lot of commercial value, and both political parties and private entities would be interested to pay a big sum to get hold of it.

What has the BBMP said?

The BBMP has filed two complaints with Bengaluru city police, which arrested three people till Sunday. According to the BBMP, Chilume was permitted only to conduct house-to-house visits to create awareness for online applications via the voter helpline mobile app, but the company violated the conditions. The permission to collect data was withdrawn on November 2 this year and the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Karnataka was informed on November 4. The BBMP said that a report was submitted by the deputy commissioner and on November 17 an FIR was filed against Chilume.

However, the BBMP has not given information on the data that was collected by the Chilume trust from 2018 and how that has been used or with whom it was shared.

Besides filing two FIRs, the BBMP says that it is looking into the matter to ascertain the extent of information collected by the NGO. Tushar Girinath, the Chief Commissioner of the BBMP, said, “We have found that people representing the NGO visiting the houses wearing BBMP badges which is a violation. We are looking into the data collected by the NGO.”

As per the BBMP’s complaint, on December 22, 2018, Chilume was permitted to revise the voters’ list in coordination with the Block Level Officer (BLO), where the Aadhar number has to be linked and several conditions were imposed on them. Though the permission letter was cancelled on November 2, 2022, Lokesh KM (who represents the NGO) created a fake ID card stating that he was the BLO and directly visited people’s homes to collect their voter ID cards and Aadhar card details. He then illegally uploaded this data to an app.

The fake ID cards of BBMP were allegedly issued to collect data from the employees.

What is the ongoing police probe about?

Two FIRs have been registered in Bengaluru related to voter data theft. Halasurgate police have registered a case under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating) and 468 (forgery) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The police have named Chilume Institute and Lokesh KM.

The police have arrested Dharanesh, the trust’s human resource (HR) official; Renuka Prasad, one of the directors; and Kempegowda, the brother of Ravi Kumar, one of the founder-directors who remains untraced. The police have conducted raids on the offices of Chilume trust and seized several documents, including access to the ‘digital Sameeksha app’ on to which the data was being entered. On Sunday, they took custody of a software developer.

What has the Congress alleged?

The Congress has written a letter to the ECI has demanded a judicial probe. Besides alleging the collection of personal details of voters, it has named Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, the higher education minister Ashwath Narayan and BBMP chief commissioner and district election officer as having colluded to commit the fraud.

The modus operandi of these persons is to bring in private limited companies, shell organizations, digital survey application owners, and other such players into the process of what is the most important part of a free and fair election, “the revision of voters’ list”, said the letter.

Citing an example of the assembly constituency of Shivajinagar, the Congress said the ruling BJP has deleted or shifted people who have voted against them in the previous elections. It claimed genuine voters of the constituency who have voted for the Congress Party or the other opposition parties are being shunted out of the constituency territory or their names are being deleted, while BJP voters and workers are being added into this assembly constituency.

What has the Election Commission said?

Karnataka’s Chief Electoral Office Manoj Kumar Meena on Thursday said that no permission for the survey was granted by the BBMP or the District Electoral Officer (DEO) to any NGO but the permission to create awareness to Chilume Trust was withdrawn immediately after receiving the complaint against it.

The Electoral Registration Officer of the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency has filed a complaint regarding misuse of the BLO ID card. The DEO, BBMP is being asked to conduct a detailed enquiry.

What has the BJP said?

The BJP has denied the Congress allegations and stated it has nothing to do with the trust, adding it was Congress which permitted them to collect the data. CM Bommai has said that the allegations are baseless and an investigation has been ordered to look into the misappropriations since 2013 (when the INC came to power). The Siddaramaiah-led congress government gave permission to Chilume trust to conduct the survey, it alleges.