Amid allegations of electoral roll manipulation and partisanship levelled against the Election Commission by the Congress, an investigation into a systematic attempt to delete 5,994 votes in the Aland Assembly constituency in Kalaburagi district of Karnataka, has hit a dead end. The case relates to an attempt to remove electors by forging Form 7, ahead of the Assembly election in 2023, and has gone cold since the EC is yet to share crucial data needed to nab the accused.
The case came to light in February 2023, when senior Congress leader and then Aland candidate B.R. Patil was alerted to several applications being filed for voter deletions in his constituency, without the knowledge of the voters. He quickly lodged a complaint with the EC. “One of the Booth Level Officers [BLOs] received a Form 7 application to delete her brother’s vote, when he had not even applied. Her brother was my supporter. The application was made in the name of another voter in the same village, who was also not aware of it. This tipped us off,” said Mr. Patil, who had lost by a narrow margin of 697 votes against a BJP candidate in 2018.
