Aland ‘vote chori’: BJP ex-MLA targeted names that he thought were not his voters, says Karnataka SIT

The SIT filed its chargesheet in a magistrate’s court on Friday in Bengaluru, naming Guttedar, his son Harshananda, his personal aide Tipperudra, as well as operators of a data centre – Akram Pasha, Aslam Pasha, and Md Ashfaq – and a West Bengal native, Bapi Adya, who are alleged to have helped file the illegal applications for deletion of voter names.

Guttedar had won from Aland in 2018 by a narrow margin of 697 votes. According to the SIT, the voter deletion attempt was made to avoid a repeat, after identifying voters who were not likely to vote for him in 2023. Applications were made for deletion of around 6,000 names, of which only 24 were found to be genuine as they no longer lived in Aland, in Kalaburagi.

“A conspiracy was hatched for the political gain of A-1 (Subhash Guttedar) in the Aland Assembly constituency. The conspiracy was to identify the names of potential voters who did not vote for A-1 among the names of voters listed in the voter list, and remove them from the voter list,” the SIT says in its chargesheet, adding that these names were then shared with the accused data centre operators.

Calling it an attempt “to deprive voters of their rights”, the chargesheet says, “it is prima facie confirmed that A-1 played a major role in the act of fraud”.

As previously reported, the data centre operators were allegedly paid ₹80 for every deletion request.

While detailing the role played by the various accused, the chargesheet accuses Guttedar, his son and aide of attempting “to destroy election related documents in their possession when the SIT was carrying out searches in October this year regarding the illegal vote deletion conspiracy”.

The chargesheet indicates that further investigations will continue and more chargesheets may be filed.

Guttedar has denied involvement in the attempted illegal vote deletion, asking: “If this was the case, how was Congress candidate B R Patil elected in 2023?”

His son Harshananda said Saturday: “This case has been created against us. The case was registered in 2023 but did not see any progress. After Rahul Gandhi raised the issue ahead of the Bihar elections, this case was given prominence. This is a conspiracy by B R Patil.”

On October 31, a special court for elected representatives in Bengaluru granted anticipatory bail to Guttedar, Harshananda, and Tipperudra.

The SIT chargesheet is nearly 22,000-page long, with a large majority of it supporting documents provided by the Election Commission on the IP addresses used to make the voter deletion requests between the end of 2022 and early 2023, sources said.