Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Thursday accused the Election Commission of having engineered the mass deletion of voters before the 2023 Karnataka election. During a detailed PowerPoint presentation to reporters in Delhi this morning, he also said the state's Criminal Investigation Department had 18 letters in 18 months to the EC asking for relevant information.
The EC responded quickly and termed the allegations "incorrect" and "baseless". "No deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public... no deletion can take place without giving an opportunity of being heard to the affected person," it said on X.
On specific charges of alleged deletion of 6,018 names from the voter list in Aland constituency, the EC issued a specific response. "In 2023, certain unsuccessful attempts were made for the deletion of electors in Aland Constituency, and an FIR was filed by the ECI itself to investigate the matter." The EC also pointed out the Congress won the seat in the 2023 election.
Earlier, Mr Gandhi had said the CID, in its letters, had sought information such as the destination IP of the devices on which voter deletion forms were allegedly filled and OTP trails.
NDTV has accessed copies of some of these letters, including one dated February 1 from the CID's Cyber Crime division to the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer, seeking IP logs of devices allegedly used to fill voter deletion forms, as well as dates and times of all deletion requests.
The Feb 1 letter made five demands, including asking if OTPs or multi-factor authentication are used to log in to and file or update applications via the voter services mobile app.
NDTV also accessed a copy of a letter from the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer to the Election Commission in Delhi. Dated Feb 4, that letter said the CID had asked for "certain information related to a case... related to submission of online applications for deletion of names..."
The CID wrote to the state Chief Electoral Officer again on February 14 and Feb 25.
The last such letter NDTV accessed was dated March 14.
All the letters referred to the alleged mass deletion of voters in Aland.
Earlier today Mr Gandhi, with a detailed PowerPoint presentation behind him, addressed a crowd of reporters and media personnel, claimed voter IDs had been deleted in Karnataka (as they had in Haryana and other states) using fake logins and phone numbers.
This, he alleged, is being done in a systematic manner using a centralised software, and the exercise targets voters from marginalised and oppressed communities, including religious minorities, who traditionally vote for the Congress or an allied opposition party.
The Congress leader demanded the EC release to the Karnataka CID the digital data to track down all such deletions, including IP logs that will allow investigators to identify devices used to make fraudulent requests as well as the time and place the request originated from.
"Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar needs to stop protecting the people who are destroying Indian democracy," Mr Gandhi alleged. "EC has to release this data within a week. Otherwise, we will know for sure that Gyanesh Kumar is protecting people who are destroying and attacking the Constitution," he said.
