Bengaluru: The Special Investigation Team probing the “vote chori” (vote theft) in Aland assembly segment in 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 said 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 B R 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 the “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 B K 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 said.