Former Karnataka BJP MLA Subhash Guttedar, along with his son and an associate, sought anticipatory bail from a special court in Bengaluru Thursday, in connection with the Aland voter deletion case.
Subhash Guttedar, 74, a two-term BJP MLA from Aland, his son Harsha Guttedar, a zilla panchayat level leader, and an associate, Tipperudra, moved a special court for elected representatives for anticipatory bail in the case registered on a complaint by Election Commission of India (ECI) officials in February 2023, ahead of the Karnataka Assembly polls in May that year.
The move came in the wake of a probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka CID, which found leads to the possible involvement of the former MLA and his associates in the voter deletion case following searches two weeks ago.
The SIT conducted searches on properties linked to Subhash Guttedar, the losing BJP candidate from Aland in the 2023 Karnataka Assembly poll; his sons, Harsha Guttedar, a local zilla panchayat leader, and Santhosh Guttedar, a liquor businessman; Kalaburagi-based chartered accountant Mallikarjun Mahantagol; and others.
Data centre’s role revealed in SIT probe
The searches followed findings by the SIT into the use of a data centre operated by a Kalaburagi resident, Mohammed Ashfaq, who went to Dubai in 2023, and an associate, Md Akram, for an alleged illegal voter deletion exercise under a deal in which Rs 80 was paid per deletion to data entry operators at the data centre.
The SIT recovered multiple laptops, including one alleged to have been used for the illegal voter list manipulation activities from December 2022 to February 2023, during a voter list revision exercise by the ECI.
“The investigation has found the key evidence required to prosecute the case,” sources familiar with the SIT probe said.
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The illegal voter deletion efforts in Aland came to light in February 2023, after Congress workers in Aland insisted on a thorough verification of deletion requests submitted to election officials, after coming to know of a few illegal requests to delete people who were alive and residing in the constituency.
The investigations by Congress workers revealed that the names of 6,670 voters had allegedly been sought to be removed from various booths in Aland.
Election officials conducted a ground-level verification of the names proposed for deletion, following a request from the EC and the district commissioner. This verification process revealed that 6,018 names were submitted for deletion through remote applications across the 254 election booths in Aland. Of those 6,018 voters, only 24 were found to be living outside the area, while 5,994 were confirmed as still residing there.
An assistant commissioner for Kalburagi and ECI returning officer for Aland filed a police complaint at the Aland police station on February 21, 2023, against unknown people under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections for impersonation, providing false information, and forgery.
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According to the FIR, unknown people “used multiple mobile phones to place online applications for deletion of names of voters without the consent or knowledge of the voters”. Visits to the homes of several people whose names were sought to be deleted revealed that the applications were filed without the voters’ knowledge, states the FIR.
SIT did not get anything from my house: Subhash Guttedar
Subhash Guttedar, who contested the 2018 and 2023 Assembly polls on a BJP ticket, denied any links to the illegal voter deletion case following SIT raids on his properties last week.
“The SIT raided my house at Kalaburagi, but they did not get anything. They searched my house in Aland. They made allegations that we have burnt documents. In everybody’s houses, there was a cleaning process for Deepavali, and the same happened in my house. It is trash that has been burnt,” he said.
Guttedar claimed that the Congress’s winning candidate from Aland in the 2023 polls B R Patil was behind the allegations of vote theft for personal gain.
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“There is nothing related to the allegations of vote theft; we have not done anything like that. We have no connection, but this is happening on the basis of B R Patil’s allegations,” Guttedar said Saturday.
In a September 18 press conference, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused the ECI of failing to provide crucial information on the illegal deletion of 6,018 votes in Aland between December 2022 and February 2023.
Congress candidate B R Patil, who managed to avert the illegal deletion of voters, won the 2023 Aland poll by a margin of 10,348 votes against Subhash Guttedar, who had won the seat in 2018 by a narrow margin of 697 votes.