For every fraudulent voter deletion submission made to the Election Commission in the Aland seat ahead of the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls, a data centre operator was paid Rs 80, as per the Karnataka Police SIT probing the case. A total of 6,018 such applications were made between December 2022 and February 2023 in the seat – working out to a total payment of Rs 4.8 lakh.
The Aland voter list irregularities were one of the cases brought up by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as part of his “vote chori” allegations. Last week, the SIT raided properties linked to BJP leader Subhash Guttedar, who lost from Aland in 2023 to the Congress’s B R Patil, as part of the probe.
A ground-level verification by election officials of the names sought to be deleted in Aland had revealed that only 24 of the 6,018 voters in whose behalf the applications were made fit the bill, as they no longer lived in the constituency.
Sources said that the SIT, which took over the investigation into the Aland case on September 26, has zeroed in on a data centre located in the Kalaburagi district headquarters as the location from where the applications were submitted. According to officials, the probe, initially conducted by the local police after the deletions were discovered in February 2023, and then by a CID cyber crime unit, before it was taken over by the SIT, points to the involvement of a local resident, Mohammed Ashfaq.
Questioned in 2023, Ashfaq was let off after he claimed innocence and promised to surrender electronic devices in his possession. He moved to Dubai subsequently.
Now the SIT, after looking at the Internet Protocol Detail Records and the devices seized from Ashfaq, has allegedly found that he was in touch via Internet calls with an associate, Md Akram, as well as three others. Last week, the SIT conducted searches at properties belonging to four of them, and allegedly found material to establish the operation of a data centre for voter list manipulation in the Kalaburagi region, and of payment of Rs 80 per deletion.
The probe allegedly found that the data centre was operated by Md Akram and Ashfaq, while the others were data entry operators. The crucial recoveries by it reportedly include a laptop used to make the applications.
Following these recoveries, the SIT conducted searches on October 17 on properties belonging to BJP leader Guttedar, his sons Harshananda and Santhosh, and their chartered accountant associate Mallikarjun Mahantagol. SIT officers said that they seized more than seven laptops along with mobile phones, and the source of the money paid out is being investigated.
The probe reportedly found that 75 mobile numbers – belonging to people as varied as a poultry farm worker to relatives of policemen – were used to register with the EC portal to place requests for changes in voter lists of Aland.
The SIT is still to determine how access was gained to the EC portal using fake credentials, to make the voter deletion requests. As The Indian Express reported, neither those whose credentials were used to access the EC portal, nor the voters on whose behalf the applications were made, were in the know.
Guttedar, a four-time MLA from Aland, has claimed he has no links to the voter deletion attempt, and that the Congress winner from the seat in 2023, B R Patil, had made the allegations for personal gain. According to Guttedar, Patil wants to become a minister and hoped to curry favour with Rahul Gandhi by making the charges.
Asked about the SIT’s findings, Congress media department head Pawan Khera said: “Under the BJP, the sacred right to vote has been reduced to a commodity – suspended for as little as Rs 80 per person. It is a disgrace for this government.”
The probe proved Gandhi’s charge that the voter deletions were not random and that there was “a method to this madness”, Khera said. “The SIT’s findings now confirm that vote chori is no accident but a centrally organised, well-funded racket designed to rig our elections. The more we scratch the surface, the more this fraud is exposed.”
