'Vote theft': SIT zeroes in on six suspects who were paid Rs 80 per vote deletion in Karnataka's Aland

Bengaluru: The Special Investigation Team probing the alleged "vote chori" (vote theft) in the Aland Assembly segment during the 2023 elections in Karnataka has discovered that "attempts" were made to delete votes and that for every successfully deleted vote, suspects were paid Rs 80.

The SIT has zeroed in on at least six suspects involved in the scam.

There were requests to delete 6,994 votes, but barring a few genuine cases, other requests were bogus, PTI reported, quoting sources in the Criminal Investigation Department.

The Aland case was among those cited by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in his 'vote chori' allegations against the BJP.

Aland is in Kalaburagi, the home district of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. Senior Congress MLA B R Patil represents the seat.

It was Patil and Kharge’s son Priyank Kharge, Minister and Chittapur MLA, who unearthed the vote deletion attempts and alerted the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer (CEO).

According to Patil, applications were filed to delete 6,994 'Congress votes' comprising Dalits and minorities. The deletion was stopped after the CEO ordered a status quo.

Patil had said that had these votes been deleted, he would have lost the election. He had won the 2023 election by a margin of about 10,000 votes against his nearest rival, Subhash Guttedar of the BJP.

Taking a serious note of it, the Karnataka government formed the SIT to probe "vote theft", which is headed by the Additional Director-General of Police B K Singh in the CID.

"Attempts were indeed made in Aland to delete votes. We questioned about 30 people, and of them, five to six are strong suspects. They can be arrested," a top official in the CID told PTI on Thursday.

While not ruling out the possibility of similar attempts made elsewhere, the officer said, "We are just focusing on Aland because the complaint was regarding that constituency."

According to sources in the CID, the six suspects were associated with a data centre and had made use of voice over internet protocol to delete votes.

Based on the details, the SIT raided the premises linked to the suspects. They also raided the premises of Subhash Guttedar, his sons Harshananda Guttedar and Santosh Guttedar and their chartered accountant.

The SIT also discovered burnt voter records near Subhash Guttedar’s house.

Guttedar told reporters that in view of Deepavali, the housekeeping staff in his house had burnt all the "waste materials".

"There was no mala fide intention behind burning these documents. If we had ulterior motives, we would have done it somewhere away from our house," the BJP leader said.

(With PTI inputs)