Voter Deletion Scandal Rocks Karnataka: CM Seeks Answers!
Voter Deletion Scandal Rocks Karnataka: CM Seeks Answers!
Massive discrepancies in Karnataka's electoral rolls revealed! A new survey alleges wrongful voter deletions, impacting millions, especially marginalized communities. CM Shivakumar demands urgent action.
Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar has called for a detailed, constituency-wise account of objections filed to remove voters from electoral rolls. This comes after a significant survey report highlighted alarming irregularities in the state's voter revision process.
The chief minister's statement followed the submission of a 23-page report by a delegation led by actor and activist Prakash Raj. This report, compiled by the Anti SIR Alliance and Citizens' Vote Protection Committee, is based on a house-to-house verification conducted across 100 polling booths in 25 districts of Karnataka. It paints a troubling picture of alleged wrongful voter deletions.
The survey claims that numerous voters, despite continuing to reside at their registered addresses, were erroneously classified as absent, shifted, or deceased.
The report emphasizes that these exclusions disproportionately affect poorer and marginalized communities, including Dalits, Adivasis, nomadic groups, Muslims, and women.
It urges for further verification of these deletions and the restoration of names that were wrongly removed.
One striking example cited in the audit is a locality in Bengaluru, where 826 out of 1,300 residents were marked as 'shifted' even though they still live at the same addresses and had submitted their enumeration forms. There were also instances where living voters were mistakenly listed as dead.
Overall, the report states that a staggering 1.08 crore voters were placed in 'absent, shifted, dead, duplicate, and others (ASDDO)' categories during the revision. This figure includes 65.45 lakh classified as shifted, 15.17 lakh as absent, 16.39 lakh as deceased, 7.09 lakh as duplicate, and 3.83 lakh under other categories.
The civil society survey also highlighted a drastic 43.6% reduction in Bengaluru's draft electoral roll, dropping from 1.11 crore voters to just 48.48 lakh. Official SIR data had categorized 46.88 lakh Bengaluru voters into the ASDDO groups.
The report also questioned the validity of 43.81 lakh notices issued for voter record discrepancies, noting that 23.45 lakh of these concerned names unlinked to the 2002 electoral roll, while 20.35 lakh were due to logical discrepancies.
Concerns are also mounting over Form 7 applications, which are used to request voter deletions. In Nittur (B) in Bidar's Bhalki Assembly constituency, over 500 such applications were reported across four polling stations. Residents there alleged that these applications, containing their voter details, were submitted by individuals who did not even reside in the village.
Further complicating matters, official data regarding Form 7 applications shows discrepancies.
The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer reported 67,307 applications in its draft roll data, while another official dataset recorded 61,130 applications received and processed. Officials have acknowledged this difference of approximately 6,000 applications requires verification.
It's important to note that this audit covered 100 polling booths out of over 50,000 statewide, serving as a sample rather than a comprehensive statewide verification.
