The probe into the fraudulent deletion of 6,018 names from the voter list for the Aland Assembly constituency in Karnataka ahead of the 2023 state polls – which has been raised as one of the instances of “vote chori” by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi – is allegedly leading to associates of the losing BJP candidate from the seat.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka Police CID Friday raided properties allegedly linked to Subhash Guttedar, who lost from Aland in 2023, at Kalaburagi and Aland.
Sources said that while searches were on at Kalaburagi, officials received information about an alleged attempt to destroy documents related to the case in neighbouring Aland, causing the SIT team to rush there.
“There was a lot of drama during the raids… But the searches provided crucial leads in the form of computer devices and other material,” a police officer said.
One of the locations searched by the SIT, with the aid of the local police, was a local bar in Kalaburagi called ‘Apna Bar and Restaurant’, apart from homes of Guttedar and his close relatives. The bar was allegedly a key centre of the operation involving the voter deletions.
Sources said documents like voter lists and applications for deletions and additions to the same ahead of the 2023 polls were among those seized during the raids. In Aland, the SIT reportedly intercepted attempts to dispose of the documents by burning or dumping them into a river.
Denying claims of his alleged links to voter deletions, Guttedar said Saturday: “Since we are in politics, it is quite natural for us to have voter lists… The SIT raided my house in Kalaburagi but did not get anything. They searched houses in Aland. They made allegations that we have burnt documents. In everybody’s house, cleaning is done for Deepavali, and the same was happening at my house. It was trash that was burnt.”
The BJP leader also claimed that B R Patil, the Congress leader who defeated him in 2023 from Aland, had made up the allegations of vote theft for “personal gains”. “This is part of his efforts to become a minister. Since Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and others are not making him a minister, he is trying to gain the confidence of Rahul Gandhi,” Guttedar said.
Guttedar and Patil are old rivals, and have won the Aland seat four times each. Guttedar used to be in the Congress earlier.
Earlier, the SIT had searched properties linked to five persons who allegedly were responsible for filing the applications for deletion of names without the knowledge of the voters concerned. They are alleged to have gained access to the Election Commission portal fraudulently to submit the applications, and SIT sources said an electronic trail had led the team to them.
While the SIT is yet to carry out any arrests, officials claimed to have cracked their modus operandi, including submission of applications from a temporary information centre and payment for every voter illegal deletion requested. Officials are probing their financial transactions as well.
The Karnataka Police had earlier said it was yet to receive crucial data from the EC regarding destination ports and destination IP addresses for the probe. The EC’s stand is that it provided all the data it had, in September 2023, in the form of Internet logs linked to the voter deletion requests, which were made between December 2022 and February 2023 during voter list revision for the coming Assembly polls.
At his press conference on September 18 where he raised the Aland matter, Rahul Gandhi had questioned the EC’s “failure to provide crucial information”.
The case had come to light after an alert Booth Level Officer of the EC in Aland spotted a request for the deletion of the name of one of her relatives, though the relative concerned was living in the constituency. A ground-level verification by poll officials – at the instance of the EC and the District Commissioner – followed, revealing fraudulent remote applications made for the deletion of 6,018 voter names across the 254 election booths in Aland.
Of these 6,018, only 24 applications were found to be valid as the voters concerned were no longer living in the constituency.
In February 2023, the Aland returning officer filed a police complaint against unknown persons on charges of impersonation, providing false information, and forgery.
The Aland seat falls in the backward Kalyana Karnataka region, which has a high proportion of SC/STs and minorities. Patil, who eventually won the Aland seat easily by 10,348 votes, said that most of those whose names were sought to be deleted were SC/STs or minorities.
Patil, who belongs to the dominant Lingayat community, has won the Aland seat four times since 1983 – twice on the Janata Dal ticket, once on the ticket of the Karnataka Janata Party floated briefly by B S Yediyurapppa, and in 2023, for the first time as a Congress candidate.
Guttedar, who was previously in the Congress and is from the backward Idiga group, has also won the seat four times, since 1994 – twice on the ticket of the Karnataka Congress Party of S Bangarappa, once on the Janata Dal ticket, and in 2018, on the BJP ticket.
Guttedar and Patil are old rivals, and have won the Aland seat four times each. Guttedar used to be in the Congress earlier.
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