36 votes, one house: In Kasaragod's Belloor panchayat, BJP faces Bengaluru-style row

Kasaragod: In August, Rahul Gandhi held his first press conference on alleged 'vote chori', flagging large-scale voter addition in Bengaluru's Mahadevapura assembly segment during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Soon after, 52-year-old Prasanna Ashokan of Thrissur hit the headlines in Kerala. She alleged that nine strangers had registered her Poonkunnam home in the Thrissur city corporation as their address.

The LDF and the UDF alleged the BJP brought in voters from outside using the 'change of address' window.

Despite their complaints ahead of the May 2024 election, the Election Commission ignored them, and the district collector allowed the nine to vote. The seat was won by the BJP's Suresh Gopi.

Now, ahead of the upcoming panchayat election, a similar anomaly has surfaced in Kasaragod's Belloor grama panchayat, which the BJP controls with a margin of about 1,000 votes.

The voter list released by the State Election Commission shows that at House No. 10/10, as many as 38 voters are registered. Election watchers say anything above 10 is a suspect, and the number rivals 80 voters registered in one house at Bengaluru's Mahadevapura.

In Belloor, the 38 voters are allotted to the new Ward No. 11 (Natakkal). Yet the four actual residents of House No. 10/10 -- Seethu and her three sons, Seetharam, Ramesha, and Satheesha -- are listed as voters in Ward No. 9 (Basthi), where their house now falls after delimitation. "We have no clue who these people are," said Seetharam Posalike. His family, which supports the CPM, now finds its votes shifted to Basthi, an LDF stronghold where their votes carry little sway. In 2020, the LDF won Basthi by 187 votes -- well above the average winning margin of 79 across the panchayat's 14 wards.

Before delimitation, House No. 10/10 was in Belloor Ward No. 10. In 2020, panchayat president Sreedhara M won the ward by 88 votes. Responding to the present controversy, he said the 38 names against one house were the result of clerical errors, not fraud. "All of them are genuine voters with proper addresses in Ward No. 11 (Natakkal). In their applications, they mistakenly entered the ward number instead of the house number," he said.

"If any of the 38 voters are found not to be residents of Ward No. 11, I will quit politics," he said, and challenged CPM leaders to do the same if they fail to prove fraud.

Belloor, on the edge of the Karnataka forest, is one of only two panchayats controlled by the BJP in Kasaragod district, which has 38 grama panchayats and three municipalities. Madhur, on the outskirts of Kasaragod town, is the other BJP stronghold.

Belloor, however, is a tricky electoral ground. It is the smallest panchayat by population, with just 10,241 people. In seven of the erstwhile 13 wards, the winning margin in 2020 was under 50 votes, with the lowest being just seven votes. The UDF drew a blank. The BJP held nine seats and the LDF four in the 13-member board. "Shifting a few votes from one ward to another can flip the result," said CPM leader A K Kushala, who became panchayat president in 2010 at the age of 35.

He cited the example of Ward No. 3 (Koladapara), where the CPM beat the BJP by just 28 votes in 2020. "Now, six BJP voters from Ward No. 2 (Baja) have been moved into Koladapara on the pretext of a change of address. They have shown relatives' houses as their address," Kushala alleged.

Even without address changes, 13 BJP voters from two families were shifted into Ward No. 3. "Their houses are clearly within Ward No. 2. Houses further down the same lane continue to remain in Ward No. 2," Kushala said.

The CPM had raised the matter in an all-party meeting and complained to the panchayat electoral officer. "But the 13 voters were retained in Ward No. 3. Add them to the six voters shifted with address change, and the margin has narrowed," he said.

Panchayat president Sreedhara defended the electoral officer, saying the complaint came too late to be acted upon. He also pointed out that the CPM too had moved one voter from Ward No. 4 (Maradamoola) into Ward No. 3 through an address change.

 Voter list and winning margin

The BJP has a clear edge in six of the 14 wards. Winning one or two more would secure control of the panchayat again. "But if the LDF and UDF come to an understanding, there is a chance to dislodge the BJP. The LDF need not contest everywhere," said Kushala.

Even so, he admitted, redrawn ward boundaries make the fight harder. "The boundaries were redrawn under the BJP's instructions,” he alleged.

Belloor has been without a panchayat secretary for two years. Ideally, the three-member delimitation committee should include the secretary, the LSGD assistant engineer, and a data-entry technical assistant. In Belloor, however, the committee consisted of the assistant secretary, two ad hoc officials -- an NREGS engineer, and the panchayat’s youth coordinator. “The ad hoc staff were appointed by the BJP-controlled panchayat and had links to the RSS," said Kushala.

"These irregularities can only be corrected if the District Collector or the State Election Commission steps in. We will be filing a complaint,” he said.

Sreedhara countered that the BJP had a strong base in Belloor. "In the 2021 Assembly election, the BJP polled over 2,700 votes here. The LDF and IUML together managed only around 2,000. We have enough votes to win again. The CPM knows that," he said.