Rahul Gandhi during his presser in New Delhi.
Credit: Congress
New Delhi: The Election Commission on Thursday rejected the latest claims of Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Karnataka's Aland Assembly constituency and alleging that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is protecting 'vote chors' (vote thieves), saying they were "incorrect and baseless".
The response came as Rahul attacked Kumar, accusing him of stonewalling Karnataka CID’s request for information held by the poll body that could help identify the culprits who sought illegal deletion of around 6,000 votes in Karnataka’s Aland constituency.
The poll body said, "allegations made by Rahul Gandhi are incorrect and baseless. No deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public, as misconceived by (Rahul) Gandhi."
"In 2023, certain unsuccessful attempts were made for deletion of electors in Aland Assembly constituency and an FIR was filed by the authority of EC itself to investigate the matter," the EC said.
It also said Aland Assembly Constituency was won by Subhadh Guttedar (BJP) in 2018 and BR Patil (Congress) in 2023, in an apparent attempt to point out that the Congress candidate won in 2023 even though the top party leader is making allegations of irregularities.
Incidentally, the EC has not responded to the claims that the poll body has not shared information on attempts to delete voters from electoral rolls in Aland despite the Karnataka CID and Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer repeatedly asking for it. The Karnataka CID is claimed to have sought information for the past 18 months since March 2023 and the CEO seeking it last in March this year.
Congress General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh, meanwhile, released a bunch of letters by Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer to the Election Commission and the Criminal Investigation Department of Karnataka Police to the Karnataka CEO seeking details.
Ramesh said the letters show, "multiple requests by the CID for complete information including destination IP IDs, OTPs, etc" and "multiple reminders by the Karnataka CEO to the ECI for the same".
"Why is the ECI in Delhi blocking the investigation by refusing to release data to the police for 18 months? This is clear proof that the ECI is blocking the investigation so that Vote Chors are protected," he alleged.
In his letters on February 1, 14 and 25, DySP (CID) KN Yashwant Kumar has acknowledged that the investigators have received IP logs but "destination IP and Destination Port were missing". Kumar has repeatedly sought technical information from the CEO, which forwarded the queries to the EC.
One of the letters indicated that the Karnataka CEO has written to the EC on the issue at least six times while Additional Director General (Law and Order), DySPs of Aland, EOW and Cyber Crime Division and Superintendent of Police of Kalaburgi also wrote to poll authorities.