Rahul Gandhi, Priyank Kharge
Credit: PTI photo
Bengaluru: The Congress government is likely to constitute a dedicated special investigation team (SIT) on the unauthorised attempts to delete voters in the Aland constituency during the 2023 Assembly polls.
IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah would decide on this in a day or two.
Earlier this week, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi went after Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the Aland case, which is currently being probed by the Karnataka CID. He accused Kumar of refusing to share necessary information to the CID to help nab the culprits who tried to delete Congress voters in Aland.
There were attempts to delete 6,018 voters from the electoral rolls in Aland. Only 24 voters were deleted. The deletion of the remaining 5,994 votes did not happen as the applications were found incorrect.
Senior Congress lawmaker BR Patil won from Aland against BJP's Subhash Guttedar by 10,348 votes.
Addressing a news conference, Priyank charged Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) V Anbukumar with "lying" about sharing information with the CID.
"The CEO has said that all information was provided to the police on September 6, 2023. In that case, why did the CEO's office, on February 4, 2025, write to the Election Commission principal secretary listing out letters written between March 2023 and January 2025 seeking information? The CEO should clarify on why he's lying," Priyank said.
Voter deletion at Aland would not have come to the fore if it was not for Patil and other Congress leaders who raised the issue, Priyank pointed out.
Patil claimed that he would have lost the election by 1,000-2,000 votes if 5,994 votes were deleted. "There's a big network involved in this attempt to delete votes. When I rang the mobile numbers that were used to submit deletion applications, calls went to Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh," he said.
Karnataka Congress leaders have also urged Siddaramaiah to constitute an SIT to probe "vote theft" at Mahadevapura under the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha seat.