BENGALURU: The state government on Saturday formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the alleged attempt to delete 6,018 names from the voters’ list in the Aland constituency of Kalaburagi district, ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections.
This comes after Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, flagged the case at a press conference in Delhi on Thursday.
According to the government order, the team will be led by Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Criminal Investigation Department (CID), B K Singh. The members include Saidulu Adavath, Superintendent of Police (SP), Cybercrime Division, CID, and Shubhanvita, SP, Special Enquiries Division, CID. The SIT has been vested with police station powers, and the case registered at the Aland police station will be transferred to it. Any other related cases, whether already registered or to be registered in the future, will also be handled by the SIT, the order stated.
The voter deletion controversy began after former MLA BR Patil complained with the Election Commission, alleging that 6,670 voters in 256 polling booths of the Aland Assembly constituency had been illegally removed from the electoral rolls. A subsequent inquiry by the Election Commission revealed that applications had been filed through various government online platforms seeking the deletion of 6,018 voters from the rolls. Of these, 24 applications were verified as per procedure, approved, and the names were duly deleted.
However, scrutiny of 5,994 applications revealed that they had been submitted by unknown persons with malicious intent, using multiple mobile numbers, in a way that the original voters remained unaware that their names were being fraudulently removed from the list.
Following this, Mamatha Kumari, KAS, after conducting an inquiry, registered a complaint at the Aland police station in Kalaburagi on February 21, 2023.
Earlier, the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Karnataka, said only 24 of the 6,018 applications for deletion were found to be genuine while 5,994 were found to be incorrect. Accordingly, the 24 applications were accepted, and 5,994 incorrect applications were rejected, not deleted. In a statement released to the media, the CEO’s office said the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) had received 6,018 applications in Form 7, which were submitted online – using various apps during December 2022.
