Bengaluru, 23 Oct

The Special Investigation Team probing the "vote chori" (vote theft) allegations in Aland segment during 2023 Assembly elections in Karnataka has discovered that "attempts" were made to delete votes and zeroed in on at least six suspects involved in the scam.

Top sources in the Criminal Investigation Department told PTI that for every successfully deleted vote, the suspects were paid Rs 80. There were requests to delete 6,994 votes, but barring a few genuine cases, other requests were bogus.

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

It was Patil and Kharge’s son Priyank Kharge, a minister and Chittapur MLA, who unearthed 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 status quo.

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

Patil said had these votes 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 BK Singh in the CID.

"Attempts were indeed made in Aland to delete votes. We questioned about 30 people and of them, five to six 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 voice over internet protocol 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 Deepavali, 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.

Reacting to the latest revelation, Minister Priyank Kharge said on ‘X’: "Voters deleted for just Rs 80 in Aland. The latest findings from the Karnataka SIT confirm what we’ve been saying all along, over 6,000 genuine voters were struck off the rolls through a paid operation ahead of the 2023 elections in Aland."

The minister said a full-fledged data centre was operating out of Kalaburagi, where operators were systematically deleting voters’ names and tampering with our democratic process.

"All investigations now point to foul play by BJP leaders and their associates. Every dirty trick and modus operandi from the BJP’s #VoteChori playbook will be exposed piece by piece and every single person responsible will be held accountable and put behind bars," Kharge said.

Speaking to PTI, Aland MLA Patil said he is unaware of theheadway made by the SIT. He said he would wait for the final outcome of the investigation.