The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the alleged “vote chori” (vote theft) in the Aland Assembly segment during the 2023 Karnataka elections has uncovered attempts to delete thousands of votes and identified at least six key suspects involved in the operation.
Top sources in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) told PTI that the suspects were paid Rs 80 for every deleted vote.
“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 senior CID official said.
According to the SIT, around 6,018 to 6,994 fraudulent deletion requests were made through the Election Commission’s online portal, though only a few were genuine. The suspects, allegedly linked to a data centre in Kalaburagi, are believed to have used voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) systems to submit bogus deletion requests.
Aland, located in Kalaburagi district, is the home turf of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. The constituency is represented by Congress MLA B. R. Patil, who defeated BJP leader Subhash Guttedar by about 10,000 votes in the 2023 Assembly elections.
It was Patil and Priyank Kharge, minister and Chittapur MLA, who first detected the deletion attempts and alerted the Karnataka chief electoral officer, leading to a halt in the process after the CEO ordered status quo.
“Applications were filed to delete 6,994 ‘Congress votes’ comprising Dalits and minorities. The deletion was stopped after the CEO intervened,” Patil told PTI, adding that had the deletions gone through, he would likely have lost the election.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also highlighted the case during a recent news conference in New Delhi, alleging that “names of at least 6,018 voters had been illegally deleted in Aland.”
Following the revelations, the Karnataka government formed an SIT headed by Additional Director General of Police B. K. Singh to investigate the “vote theft” scandal.
As part of the probe, the SIT raided premises linked to Subhash Guttedar, his sons Harshananda and Santosh Guttedar, and their chartered accountant, seizing several laptops and mobile phones. Investigators also discovered burnt voter records near Guttedar’s residence.
Guttedar told reporters, “There was no malafide intention behind burning these documents. In view of Diwali, the housekeeping staff in my house burnt all the ‘waste materials’. If we had ulterior motives, we would have done it somewhere away from our house.”
A government source quoted by The Telegraph said, “Immediately after the 2023 Assembly elections, several complaints arose of discrepancies in the voter list. The data centre was located in the Kalaburagi district headquarters. The SIT team realised that the probes by the local police and also by the CID cyber-crime unit were on the dot.”
When contacted, Aland MLA B. R. Patil said he was unaware of the latest progress and would wait for the SIT’s final report. Priyank Kharge was not available for comment.
