‘Unlawful deletion of voter names’: Suspend BLOs, says D K Shivakumar

Bengaluru: Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President D K Shivakumar, also the deputy chief minister, on Tuesday met State Election Commissioner G M Sangreshi with a complaint that names of (the people belonging to) minority communities and Scheduled Castes (SCs) are being deleted unlawfully from the electoral rolls.

He requested the election commissioner to suspend the concerned block-level officers (BLOs) who are involved in the illegal exercise. 

Leading the delegation, which also included Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy, Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao and the legislators of the Congress party, including Rizwan Arshad and A C Srinivas, Shivakumar alleged that some of the BLOs were committing the irregularities in the voters’ list.

Complaint lodged

“I have lodged a serious complaint regarding the large-scale deletion of voters from the electoral rolls and the arbitrary shifting of members of the same family to different polling booths across several constituencies in the Greater Bengaluru area,” he said in his letter to the election commissioner.

Speaking to the reporters later, he alleged that the votes of minorities and the scheduled castes are being deleted.

“It has come to my notice through multiple representations from the party workers, booth-level agents and the concerned citizens that (the names of) a significant number of genuine voters have been removed from the rolls without due notice or verification. Such irregularities raise grave concerns about the integrity, transparency and fairness of the electoral process,” the KPCC president said in the letter.

Audit sought 

The delegation sought a comprehensive audit of recent deletions in the electoral rolls, restoration of the names of all the eligible voters who have been wrongly deleted, immediate corrective steps to ensure that members of the same household are not arbitrarily distributed across different polling booths and an opportunity for political parties to review and verify the revised rolls before final publication.

The meeting comes at a time when the Election Commission has undertaken the revision of electoral rolls, an exercise taken up ahead of the civic body polls, due ever since September 2020.

The Election Commission, the deputy chief minister said, is responsible for conducting the elections as well as for the preparation of the electoral rolls. 

Intervention sought

“Given the urgency and seriousness of the matter, we request immediate intervention and a time-bound response detailing the corrective measures undertaken,” Shivakumar said in his letter to the Election Commission, which was later shared with the media.