For every fraudulent voter deletion submission made to the Election Commission in the Aland seat ahead of the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls, a data centre operator was paid Rs 80, as per the Karnataka Police SIT probing the case. A total of 6,018 such applications were made between December 2022 and February 2023 in the seat – working out to a total payment of Rs 4.8 lakh.
The Aland voter list irregularities were one of the cases brought up by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as part of his “vote chori” allegations. Last week, the SIT raided properties linked to BJP leader Subhash Guttedar, who lost from Aland in 2023 to the Congress’s B R Patil, as part of the probe.
Sources said that the SIT, which took over the investigation into the Aland case on September 26, has zeroed in on a data centre located in the Kalaburagi district headquarters as the location from where the applications were submitted. According to officials, the probe, initially conducted by the local police after the deletions were discovered in February 2023, and a CID cyber crime unit, before it was taken over by the SIT, points to the involvement of a local resident, Mohammed Ashfaq.
Questioned in 2023, Ashfaq was let off after he claimed innocence and promised to surrender electronic devices in his possession. He moved to Dubai subsequently.
Now the SIT, after looking at the Internet Protocol Detail Records and the devices seized from Ashfaq, has allegedly found that he was in touch via Internet calls with an associate, Md Akram, as well as Junaid, Aslam and Nadeem. Last week, the SIT conducted searches at properties belonging to Akram, Junaid, Aslam and Nadeem, and allegedly found material to establish the operation of a data centre for voter list manipulation in the Kalaburagi region, and of payment of Rs 80 per deletion.
The probe has allegedly found that the data centre was operated by Md Akram and Ashfaq, while the others were data entry operators. The crucial recoveries by it reportedly include a laptop used to make the applications.
Following these recoveries, the SIT conducted searches on October 17 on properties belonging to BJP leader Guttedar, his sons Harshananda and Santhosh, and their chartered accountant associate Mallikarjun Mahantagol. SIT officers said that they seized more than seven laptops along with mobile phones, and the source of the money paid out is being investigated. The probe reportedly found that 75 mobile numbers – belonging to people as varied as a poultry farm worker to relatives of policemen – were used to register with the EC portal to place requests for changes in voter lists of Aland.
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The SIT is still to determine how the data centre operators gained access to the EC portal using fake credentials, to make the voter deletion requests. As The Indian Express reported, the identities of voters shown in the deletion applications were without the knowledge of the Aland applicants or the voters concerned.
Guttedar, a four-time MLA from Aland, has denied any links to the voter deletions, and said that the Congress winner from the seat in 2023, B R Patil, made the allegations for personal gain. According to Guttedar, Patil wants to become a minister and hoped to curry favour with Rahul Gandhi by making the charges.
A ground-level verification by election officials of the names sought to be deleted in Aland had revealed that only 24 of the 6,018 voters in whose behalf the applications were made fit the bill, as they no longer lived in the constituency.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd