BENGALURU: Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar on Monday said that the expose on ‘vote theft’ in Karnataka has led to similar cases being exposed in Maharashtra, Haryana, and Bihar.
He was speaking to reporters at the AICC headquarters in Delhi after handing over the 1.12 crore signatures collected in Karnataka as part of a campaign against ‘vote chori’ to AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Shivakumar claimed that it was the AICC research wing of Karnataka that first exposed ‘vote theft’.
The fight against vote theft, which was started by LoP in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge from Freedom Park in Bengaluru, has spread to Maharashtra, Haryana, and Bihar.
“Vote theft has definitely happened. Why did the court intervene and issue directives when SIR was being carried out in Bihar? We did an extensive investigation in Karnataka after Rahul Gandhi exposed vote fraud. No government will admit their mistakes, but it is our responsibility to highlight the fraud,” the Deputy CM explained.
On the occasion, a box of signatures was submitted to Kharge symbolically while the rest of the boxes were handed over to AICC General Secretary Netta D’Souza.
On HD Kumaraswamy’s statement that there are terrorists in Vidhana Soudha, Shivakumar hit back, “Is Kumaraswamy part of the terror outfit? Was he also not in Vidhana Soudha? It applies to him and his party members”.