BENGALURU: The Halasuru Gate police arrested four Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials, including three revenue officers and one deputy revenue officer, on charges of providing fake ID cards to representatives of the NGO Chilume Trust, which was involved in voter awareness programmes.
The arrested are Shivajinagar Revenue Officer Suhail Ahmed, Mahadevapura Revenue Officer K Chandrasekhar, RR Nagar Revenue Officer Mahesh and Chickpet Deputy Revenue Officer VB Bheemashankar, who were working as voter registrars.
The BBMP suspended them on November 21 anticipating their arrest. Suhail allegedly distributed 14 Booth Level Committee (BLC) identity cards to Chilume representatives in the Shivajinagar constituency. In the Mahadevapura Assembly Constituency Chandrasekhar gave Lokesh, a Chilume representative, the ID card of voter registrar polling station level officer or booth level officer.
Bheemashankar is accused of issuing BLC cards to Chilume representatives in the Chickpet Assembly constituency, while Mahesh too has been accused of the same wrongdoing. A senior police officer said the investigation team has arrested the officials as distribution of ID cards to private individuals is a violation of the Election Commission rules.
VOTER DATA THEFT: CHILUME OPERATED OVER PHONES
Chilume NGO, which is facing charges of tampering with data of voters, reportedly operated over phones. It has come to light that the private NGO, hired by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), deleted over one lakh names from the voters list without visiting any place. It also allegedly deleted many names online. On the other hand, it is being alleged that BBMP officials received lakhs of rupees from Chilume to allow it to carry out the revision of voters list. Chilume reportedly collected complete information of voters within three months by using fake identity cards and impersonating as Booth Level Officers (BLO). The NGO, with assistance from BBMP, had appointed hundreds of field workers for the survey.