THE BID to fraudulently delete names from voters’ lists ahead of the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls may not have been restricted to Aland constituency. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the state police investigating the case has found that a data centre used to illegally make online applications for deletion of names may have been used to also “manipulate” voters’ lists in at least two other seats falling in Kalaburagi district.
Sources said that it were primarily BJP leaders in Kalaburagi region who approached the data centre for its services. And that “an agreement was signed for changes to voter lists on behalf of a candidate from another constituency in the Kalaburagi region with the data centre”.
As per an official, “In one constituency (of Gulbarga city) as many as 35,000 voter names (primarily minorities) were manipulated.”
The SIT probe has reportedly found that funds were transferred through an accountant in Kalaburagi to the operators of the data centre. “The accountant was a key player,” sources said, adding that his laptop has been seized.
The Indian Express reported earlier that staff at the Kalaburagi data centre were paid Rs 80 for every online application made, and that it was being operated by a local resident, Mohammed Ashfaq, along with an associate, Md Akram. Both were questioned in 2023, and Ashfaq subsequently moved to Dubai. The three data entry operators have also been questioned and investigated.
Sources familiar with the SIT probe said that in the case of Aland, “key evidence required to prosecute the case” had been found. However, the probe team does not at present have a mandate to investigate alleged vote manipulation in other Kalaburagi seats.
Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had given the example of Aland as one of the instances of “vote chori”, at a press conference last month.
Chandrakanth Patil of the BJP, who lost narrowly from Gulbarga North in 2023, denied that any party candidate was involved in voter list manipulations. If any agreement was signed with operators of the data centre for voter list additions and deletions, it may have been done by local BJP leaders such as corporators, and not the BJP candidate themselves, and would have been done “legally”, he told The Indian Express.
“Local leaders conducted camps in every locality for revision in voter lists. They put up banners and advertisements in papers… it was done legally. This is for additions to voter lists, and deletions if there is duplication. The BJP leaders would have reached an agreement (with the data centre), and it is not connected to me,” Patil said.
He added that in Gulbarga North, the Congress actually may be involved in trying to change voter lists, with over 50% of the voters there belonging to minority communities. “There are more than 30,000 bogus votes among minorities in Gulbarga Uttar,” he claimed. “They (the Congress) would have done it with their own teams, not linked to the Aland team. In minority-dominated areas there is almost 100% voting.”
The 2023 defeat was Chandrakanth Patil’s second successive defeat from Gulbarga North, having lost in 2018 – again by a narrow margin, of 5,940 votes – to the Congress’s Kaneez Fathima. The Congress has retained the constituency since 2008, with Qamarul Islam its MLA from here and, after his demise, his wife Kaneez Fathima.
Congress minister Priyank Kharge, a leader from the Kalaburagi region, said that the evidence proved the party’s claims. “All investigations now point to foul play by BJP leaders and their associates. Every dirty trick and modus operandi from the BJP’s ‘vote chori’ playbook will be exposed and every single person responsible will be put behind bars,” Priyank told The Indian Express.
The Kalaburagi region has traditionally been a stronghold of the Congress on account of the large number of voters here from the Dalit, backward and minority communities. Congress president Mallikargun Kharge has been an MLA from Gurmitkal in Kalaburagi and a two-time MP from the Gulbarga Lok Sabha seat.
Sources said that like Aland, Assembly constituencies where victory margins have been narrow in recent elections were the primary targets for vote manipulation efforts.
In the 2023 Karnataka polls, the Congress swept Kalaburagi, but results in seven of the nine Assembly seats in the district were small. Of these seven seats, the Congress won five – Gulbarga North (by 2,712 votes), Afzalpur (4,594), Jevargi (10,278), Aland (10,348 votes) and Chittapur (13,640) – while the BJP won Chincholi (858 votes) and Gulbarga Rural (12,627).
The two seats where the results were decisive were won by the Congress – Gulbarga South (by 21,048 votes) and Sedam (43,561).
Earlier, as part of its probe into the Aland voter list case, the SIT searched properties linked to Subhash Guttedar, the BJP leader who lost from Aland in the 2023 Assembly polls, and that of his sons Harshanand and Santosh Guttedar, and a chartered accountant, Mallikarjun Mahantagol. Subhash Guttedar and B R Patil of the Congress, who won from Aland, are long-time rivals from the seat, with Guttedar a four-time Aland MLA.
Guttedar said after the raids that the SIT had found “nothing”. “They alleged we burnt documents (ahead of the raids). Everybody cleans their house for Deepavali, and the same was done at mine. It is trash that was burnt.”
One of the questions in the case has been whether the deletion attempts were random or targeted at voters of a party. B R Patil has maintained that these were targeted, with names of voters from booths considered Congress strongholds sought to be deleted. “We think that a study of the previous polling patterns across the 254 booths in Aland was done. Survey work may have been done too,” said Satyajit Patil, the son of B R Patil.
Rahul Gandhi also claimed this at his September 18 press conference. “The top 10 booths with maximum deletions were Congress strongholds. And the Congress had won eight of these 10 booths in 2018. It is not a coincidence but a planned operation,” he said.
The origin of the Aland probe
Then the Congress Aland candidate, B R Patil first alleged attempts to make fraudulent voter deletions during the Election Commission’s electoral list revision exercise between December 2022 and February 2023, ahead of the May 2023 Assembly elections.
Having lost the seat to his BJP rival Subhash Guttedar in 2018 by just 697 votes, Patil was on alert, and lodged a complaint saying efforts had been made to remove over 6,670 names, spread across the 254 booths of the constituency, using identities of actual voters – without the knowledge of either those making the applications, or those on whose behalf the applications were submitted.
Subsequently, on February 21, 2023, the Aland Returning Officer filed a police complaint. According to the FIR, unknown persons “used multiple mobile phones to place online applications for deletion of names of voters without the consent or knowledge of the voters”.
A ground-level verification by election officials found that 6,018 names were sought to be deleted through remote applications, and out of them, only 24 applications were valid as the voters concerned were no longer living in Aland.
The SIT is yet to determine how the data centre operators were able to gain access to the EC portal to register and make deletion requests. The access was “almost instantaneous”, with over 3,000 fake phone numbers used to file deletion applications.
A ground-level verification by election officials found that 6,018 names were sought to be deleted through remote applications, and out of them, only 24 applications were valid as the voters concerned were no longer living in Aland.
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