SIT finds 'attempts' made to delete votes during Karnataka assembly polls

Bengaluru:  At least six suspects who attempted to delete votes were identified by the Special Investigation Team probing the allegations of vote theft in the Aland assembly segment during the 2023 assembly elections in Karnataka.

Sources in the Criminal Investigation Department told PTI that suspects were paid ₹80 for every deleted vote, with a total of 6,994 vote deletions requested. A few were genuine cases, but others were bogus.

Aland Kalaburagi in North Karnataka is the home district of the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and senior Congress MLA B R Patil represents the assembly seat. 

It was Mallikarjun Kharge's son, Priyank Kharge, a minister and Chittapur MLA, along with Patil, who discovered the vote deletion attempts and alerted the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer.

According to Patil, applications were filed to delete 6,994 'Congress votes' comprising Dalits and minorities. The deletion was stopped after the CEO ordered the status quo.

Recently, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi held a press conference in New Delhi detailing how the "vote chori" has been taking place and cited the example of Aland.

Patil said that had these votes been deleted, he would have surely lost the election. He had won the 2023 assembly election with a margin of about 10,000 votes against his nearest rival, Subhash Guttedar (BJP).

Taking a serious note of it, the Karnataka government formed the SIT to probe "vote theft", which is headed by the Additional Director General of Police B K Singh in the CID.

"Attempts were indeed made in Aland to delete votes. We questioned about 30 people, and five to six of them are strong suspects. They can be arrested," a top official in the CID told PTI on Thursday.

While not ruling out the possibility of similar attempts made elsewhere, the officer said, "We are just focusing on Aland because the complaint was regarding that constituency."

According to sources in the CID, the six suspects were associated with a data centre and had made a voice-over internet protocol call to delete votes.

Based on the details, the SIT raided the premises linked to the suspects. They also raided the premises of Subhash Guttedar, his sons Harshananda and Santosh Guttedar and their Chartered Accountant.

In the meantime, the SIT also discovered the burnt voter records near Subhash Guttedar's house. Guttedar told reporters that in view of Diwali, the housekeeping staff in his house burnt all the 'waste materials'.

"There was no malafide intention behind burning these documents. If we had ulterior motives, we would have done it somewhere away from our house," the BJP leader said.

Aland MLA Patil told PTI that he is unaware of the headway made by the SIT. He said he would wait for the outcome of the investigation.

(Using PTI inputs)