Congress Committing Irregularities In Karnataka SIR: HD Kumaraswamy To NDTV

The DK Siddaramaiah government in Karnataka is misusing its office to conduct massive irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists that recently started in the state, Union minister and Janata Dal Secular chief HD Kumaraswamy has alleged. The Congress government is misleading the people and pressurising the Election Commission staff to include illegal immigrants and retain dead people on voter rolls, he told NDTV in an exclusive interview today. The government was directing BLOs to "give all support for illegal activities," he added.  

Asked about his party's ongoing protests over the SIR exercise, he said the government has been misusing its powers Day One, "giving direction to all BPOs and District Magistrates... to field voters who are not there".

Even before the revision process started, for the last 15 to 20 days after DK Shivakumar came to power, "he has given the message to the people to have fear," he said.

"If you are not going to check your voter list, and if you are not going to join your vote in the voter list, you will not get all our guarantee schemes which we are giving from the last three years. All those things we are going to stop," he quoted the Congress leaders as saying.

"These people wanted to get some illegal voters... Because of this only, we are opposing, and we have met the local representative of the Election Commission, the CEO. We have given a lot of documentary evidence of what they started from the first day itself," he added. 

Asked what their demand is, Kumaraswamy said they have informed the Commissioner of the illegal activities going on -- including the violation of the door-to-door visit rule. 

The Congress has pointed to what they called mass-scale irregularities in the SIR exercise in Bengal, Bihar and the other states and said this time, the NDA is un-nerved since a large number of Congress voters are registering themselves.