Ahead of Congress’s protest scheduled on August 5 in Bengaluru over alleged voter fraud during 2024 Lok Sabha elections, former minister H Nagesh had written to the Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka, seeking a copy of a complaint he claimed he had submitted in April 2023 alleging forged entries in voters’ list. The CEO’s office, however, denied receiving any such complaint.
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Nagesh contested the 2023 polls from Mahadevapura constituency in Bengaluru and lost by a margin of 44,000 votes to BJP’s S Manjula.
On July 31 this year, in a letter to the state election commission, he said, “I, H Nagesh, wish to bring to your kind attention that we had earlier during April 2023, submitted a list containing details of alleged forged entries in the voters list pertaining to our constituency 174 Mahadevapura. This issue is of grave concern as it affects the transparency and fairness of the electoral process. However, we have misplaced the list of documents — we do not have a copy of the submitted documents for our records. We kindly request you to share a copy of the document which we had submitted.”
The letter was shared on the official X handle of the Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka, and the reply attached.
Yogeshwar S, Joint Chief Electoral Officer, in a letter dated August 2, said that “this office does not have records of any such letter received from you during April 2023 on the issue of electoral rolls with a list containing details of alleged forged entries in the voter list pertaining to 174-Mahadevapura Assembly constituency, which you have suddenly raised now.”
“This office has a statutory copy of the electoral roll which is also available online and is always handed over to the candidates during the elections, including you while you were a contesting candidate,” the letter said.
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“Since then, you have not filed any petition with respect to 174-Mahadevapura Assembly Constituency as per Section 80 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 nor any appeal to either the first appellate authority or second appellate authority against entries in the electoral rolls published in 2023 as per Section 24 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950,” it said.