3 days ago
Mahadevapura has seen allegations over electoral roll manipulation earlier too
As a political storm is brewing over Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's 'vote theft' allegations in the Mahadevapura constituency of Bengaluru, many in the area who have in the past raised concerns about electoral rolls are now demanding a thorough investigation by the Election Commission of India (ECI). However, they also caution against 'politicisation' of the issue, which they fear will only muddy waters and lead to no tangible outcomes.
Activists had raised issues related to electoral roll discrepancies in this Assembly constituency ahead of 2018 and 2023 Assembly elections in the State as well, with allegations of both voter suppression and voter deletion.
Jagadish Reddy, associated with the Indian National Congress and with local RWA Varthur Rising, said they were the first to flag the issue with the Congress two years ago, leading to a systematic investigation.
'On the ground level, we saw a lot of anti-incumbency, but representatives of the same party continued to win with increased margins. When we pulled out the voters' list from some of the booths in Varthur and Whitefield, we noticed there were anywhere between 50 to 100 additions and deletions. When we went to check on some of the addresses that were in the list, we could not find anyone living there,' he said.
Million Voters' Rising
Back in 2017-18, the residents of Whitefield had begun a campaign called Million Voters' Rising to get the residents on the electoral roll. However, it was noticed that between 2012 and 2018, around 66%, an abnormally high number, of applications were rejected. Then Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Sanjiv Kumar had ordered a re-scrutiny of all the rejected applications. The residents had even approached the Karnataka High Court.
Things did not change much for these voters even after that as in the months leading up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, more than 3,000 of them again faced difficulties getting on the electoral rolls. Volunteers of the campaign had alleged that there were some 'deliberate efforts' to disenfranchise some voters.
'The voters' list of the constituency has always appeared bloated as the turnout would always be relatively lower when compared to the registration data. Now that the question is raised again, and there is some proof that indicates manipulation could have happened, the ECI should get to the bottom of the issue. The sanctity of the electoral roll is very important to democracy,' said Ajit S. of Million Voters' Rising.
Chilume controversy
In 2022, a big controversy broke out when Chilume Educational Cultural and Rural Development Trust, an NGO which was tasked with carrying out the SVEEP campaign, was accused of collecting electors' data and parallelly running a political consultancy firm, selling the same to politicians and having links to BJP politicians. Chilume was active in three city constituencies of Mahadevapura, Shivaji Nagar and Chickpet.
The Congress, then in the Opposition, had alleged that the then ruling BJP had pushed for several targeted deletions from the electoral rolls, misusing this data. However, an investigation by the government found no manipulation of electoral data, but admitted that illegally collected voter data was stored in foreign servers. The BBMP cut off all ties with the NGO.
'Need more transparency'
Electoral rolls analyst P. G. Bhat, who has been consistently arguing that Bengaluru's electoral roll has been bloated and inaccurate for the last decade and a half, said that Mr. Gandhi was right in criticising the electoral roll for its poor state, but he needs to put out more information as to how he arrived at the conclusions he has drawn.
'For instance, he says there are 11,965 duplicate voters. There are multiple levels of duplication and he has not said how exactly he arrived at this number,' he said, adding that Mr. Gandhi 'should not politicise this issue as the focus gets lost and nothing comes out of it when that happens.'
