'Rs 80 paid for every voter deletion in Aland': Karnataka SIT makes stunning claim

The Karnataka SIT found that Rs 80 were paid for at least 6,018 fraudulent voter deletion applications in Aland during the 2023 elections.

In an alarming revelation, the Karnataka Police SIT, probing the case of voter list irregularities of the Aland seat, found that a data centre operator was paid Rs 80 for each fraudulent voter deletion.

The Aland voter list irregularities were one of the cases brought up by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as part of his “vote chori” allegations against the BJP.

The SIT also mentioned that a total of 6,018 such applications to delete voters’ names were made between December 2022 and February 2023 in the seat, working out to a total payment of Rs 4.8 lakh. Last week, the SIT raided properties linked to BJP leader Subhash Guttedar, who lost from Aland in 2023 to the Congress’s B R Patil, as part of the probe.

According to the findings, the investigation initially handled by local police and a CID cyber crime unit before being taken over by the SIT, suggested a local resident, Mohammed Ashfaq’s involvement in the deletions discovered in February 2023. However, Ashfaq was let off after he claimed innocence and promised to surrender the electronic devices he had. He also moved to Dubai subsequently.

In September, BR Patil, Congress MLA from Karnataka’s Aland, doubled down on allegations levelled by Rahul Gandhi and said there was a vote theft attempt. Speaking to CNN-News18, the Congress leader said that he would have lost the seat if the party had not found out about voter deletions.

Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, alleged that over 6,000 applications were filed impersonating voters in a bid to delete names of original voters. In Karnataka’s Aland, someone tried to delete 6,018 votes and got caught by coincidence, he said, alleging that names of voters of the Congress were being deleted systematically. He claimed that 6,018 applications were filed impersonating voters and this filing was done automatically using mobile numbers from outside Karnataka.