BENGALURU: The Foreigners Registration Office (FRO) has contacted the office of the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), seeking details of 11 foreign nationals who were found to possess Karnataka voter identity cards and voting rights.
A source in the CEO office said, “These 11 foreigners were caught in Tamil Nadu and have criminal cases against them. They were said to be from Sri Lanka, but we do not have all details. Since the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is ongoing in Karnataka, we have been contacted to verify their voting details. We are checking if they are fake or genuine, and if ever they were used. We are also verifying the details of other voters, particularly in cases where anomalies and no-mapping information has been shared.”
In addition, officials from other states, including Goa, Andaman and Odisha, have also approached the CEO Karnataka office seeking details and verification of electors who are said to have included information of Karnataka in their SIR forms.
The source said that in some cases, while seeking information of electors in anomaly verification, passports are also being sought. This document is then being shared with the passport officials, and in some cases, they will also be shared with the ministries concerned for authentication and verification.
All documents shared under the no-mapping category will be doubly verified by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and the District Election Officer (DEO) to establish citizenship, the source said, adding that once the SIR exercise is completed in Karnataka, the data will be scanned for similar entries to further clean the electoral rolls.