Bengaluru/New Delhi, 18 Sept

Rahul Gandhi’s claims about vote deletion in the Aland constituency in Karnataka triggered a political slugfest, with the Congress doubling down on claims about the BJP targeting minority communities, while the Opposition party said “go to court”.

Congress MLA BR Patil, who won the Assembly election from Aland with a margin of over 10,000 votes in 2023 alleged that there was targeted deletion of minority, Scheduled Caste and backward caste votes. He said requests were made to delete “my voters in my constituency and not other voters”.

Speaking to press in Delhi, Patil said, “When I learnt about it (deletion of votes), Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge and I went to the Election Commission and the Deputy Commissioner and we held a press conference.”

“After this, the returning officer carried out a verification to find out any discrepancy or confusion. The officer ordered a status quo. If the status quo was not maintained and 6,994 votes were deleted then I would have lost the election. This is a big issue,” he added.

Kharge alleged that Form 7 was misused under the previous BJP government to delete voters "en masse", ahead of May 2023 Assembly polls.

Form 7 is an application for objecting inclusion of the name of the other person, or seeking deletion of one's own name, or seeking deletion of any other person’s name in the electoral roll due to death or shifting.

Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar added that similar instances had occurred in the KR Puram constituency.

Some people attempted to delete a few voters' names by giving wrong telephone numbers.

"They wanted to delete a very large number of votes. Ultimately we found it out," Shivakumar said. The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Karnataka, which has been assigned to probe the matter, is seeking information about the telephone numbers used for deleting the voters.

However, the BJP dismissed the claims.

State BJP President BY Vijayendra noted that the while BJP won the 2018 Assembly election in Aland, Congress took it in 2023.

“If Congress genuinely believes there is an issue, let them submit an affidavit with their ‘evidence’ to the EC or go to court,” he wrote on X.