Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai indulging in corrupt electoral practice, alleges Congress; seeks his resignation

The Congress in Karnataka on Thursday demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, alleging he is directly responsible for a corrupt electoral practice by assigning a private entity to collect door-to-door voter information.

Congress general secretary and the party's Karnataka in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala said at a press conference here that Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, the civic agency, authorised a private firm in August to carry out a door-to-door survey of voters 'free of cost' who gathered information about their gender, mother tongue, collected voter ID and Aadhaar details.

Alleging that "the chief minister was the conduit of the electoral fraud," he said, "there has to be an FIR against Basavaraj Bommai and he should be arrested." The cache of data was not fed into the Garuda application of the government but into an application 'Digital Sameeksha' of the private firm, Surjewala charged.

The firm also appointed hundreds of Booth Level Officers (BLO), which technically should be a government appointed persons, said Surjewala, adding that these BLOs were also given identity cards resembling as if they are government employees.

"We want to know who permitted a private entity to conduct the survey on behalf of the BBMP? Who recommended the government to give such contract to a private entity and why the antecedents of the contractor was not checked?" Surjewala said.