A Congress delegation led by Dy CM DK Shivakumar submitted a memorandum to the Karnataka State Election Commissioner alleging major lapses and fraud in the voter list revision ahead of local body elections, demanding the suspension of involved BLOs.
A delegation of Congress leaders led by Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar on Tuesday submitted a memorandum to the State Election Commissioner to rectify the alleged lapses in voter list revision in view of the upcoming local body elections. The delegation that submitted the memorandum to State Election Commissioner G S Sangreshi included Ministers Ramalinga Reddy, Dinesh Gundu Rao, BAMUL Chairman D K Suresh, MLAs Rizwan Arshad, A C Srinivas, MLCs Puttanna and Srinivas.
Congress Alleges Voter List Fraud
Speaking to reporters later, Shivakumar said, “Our party delegation met the State Election Commissioner. In view of the upcoming GBA, zilla panchayat, taluk panchayat and gram panchayat elections, the State Election Commission is revising the voters’ list. There are many lapses in the revised list.” He further alleged that ECI officials, the Booth Level Officers (BLO), are “involved in voter list fraud” and demanded their suspension. “BLOs are involved in voter list fraud. Last time, members of the same family had been allotted to different booths. The mapping is not being done properly, hence send the party BLOs along with Commission’s BLOs for mapping the voter list with residences and votes. The lapse must be corrected. We have appealed to revise the voter list within the legal framework,” he said.
“In view of the upcoming local body elections, the voters list must be revised now itself. If something goes wrong with the voters list, it would bring a bad name to the government and the Election Commission. Hence, we had a meeting about this in advance. Our memorandum has appealed for suspension of BLOs involved in voter fraud such as dividing family votes in different booths, removing minorities and SC/STs from the voter list, etc.,” he added.
Shivakumar on Revision Process
Asked if the State Election Commission would revise the voters list separately, the DCM said, “The State Election Commission has the power to revise the voters list separately, hence they are doing it.”
Asked if two revisions won’t create confusion, he said, “We don’t want to discuss that. The responsibility of conducting local body elections has been given to the State Election Commission. The older version of the voter list is not correct and hence they need to prepare a new list after mapping.”
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