Five months after TNM and Kannada digital platform Pratidhvani published an investigation into large-scale voter data theft in Bengaluru, a probe by the Election Commission of India (ECI) has vindicated our findings. The probe by IAS officer Amlan Aditya Biswas, Regional Commissioner, Bengaluru Division, has found that many officers of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) gave illegal and undue favours to a private trust called Chilume, allowed it to collect voter data, and even tried to subvert a complaint against the trust. The probe also established a link between Chilume and BJP Minister CN Ashwathnarayan, and found that another company linked to Chilume was engaged by Hombale Films, a major production house based in Bengaluru known for two of the highest grossing Kannada films of all time – KGF and Kantara. What the probe is yet to establish is where the data collected by the private trust is. The probe report stated that it could be stored on foreign servers, possibly Chinese or Eastern European, in violation of ECI’s rules.
In November 2022, TNM and Pratidhvani had exposed how Chilume Trust, founded by Bengaluru-based entrepreneur Ravikumar Krishnappa, covertly collected voter data of Bengaluru citizens by making field agents pose as election officials. The voter data theft was enabled by multiple government orders that allowed the private trust to ‘create awareness’ about voter rights.
A complaint was filed against Chilume Trust by an NGO called Samanvaya Trust alleging that Chilume was misusing the terms of its agreement with the BBMP. The complaint by Samanvaya detailed how Chilume had issued fake cards identifying its field workers as a ‘Booth Level Officer’ (BLO) or a ‘Booth Level Coordinator’ (BLC).
Even though the complaint was filed on September 20, 2022, the probe by Amlan Biswas found that the Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) Programme Nodal officer and Rangappa, Special Commissioner, Election, BBMP, kept the BBMP Commissioner Tushar Giri Nath in the dark about the complaint.
Tushar, who is also the District Election Officer (DEO), came to know of the complaint against Chilume only at the end of October 2022 when TNM reporters investigating the illegal voter data collection approached him. The report says, “The matter was not brought to the notice of the Chief Commissioner and DEO till a news reporter mentioned it to him in the last week of October.”
The probe found that Ravikumar Krishnappa, the founder of Chilume, pressured the complainant asking them to retract the complaint on November 3. Ravikumar also met with Special Commissioner, Election Rangappa in this period, raising questions about the IAS officer’s role in enabling Chilume’s voter data collection.
Apart from Rangappa, the probe indicted four electoral registration officers (EROs) in Bengaluru – in Mahadevapura, Chickpet, Shivajinagar, and RR Nagar – for issuing fake BLO cards to Chilume’s field workers. “There not only was a dereliction of duty by the EROs but also gross misuse of office and deliberate attempt to enable a private organisation to directly have access to voters,” read the report by Amlan Biswas.
The probe found that in January 2019, the ERO of KR Puram had emailed lists of young voters with their phone numbers to Chilume. “The sharing of phone numbers with a private trust is in itself a serious violation of procedure,” read the report. TNM had previously reported that Chilume was paid Rs 17.5 lakh by Nandiesha Reddy, BJP’s candidate from KR Puram constituency in Bengaluru in the 2018 state Assembly elections. Nandiesha had told TNM that he paid Chilume for a survey of voters in the KR Puram constituency.
The probe delved into transactions made by Chilume over the years and found one transaction with a foundation run by Minister Ashwathnarayan and another transaction with Hombale Films. It must be noted here that Vijay T Kiragandur, the Director of Hombale Films, is Ashwathnarayan’s cousin. According to an investigation by Indian Express, the minister had even stood as a guarantor for loans availed by Hombale.
The probe found that in July 2016, a bank account linked to Chilume founder Ravikumar paid Ashwathnarayan’s foundation Rs 15,000.
Hombale Films and Raj Dharma Analytica, which are under the large business enterprise Hombale Group, paid Digital Sameeksha Rs 10.5 lakh and Rs 5.9 lakh respectively. Digital Sameeksha is an app owned by Ravikumar and conducts surveys and is used for election work. However, the invoices mention that the payments were for “manpower for film promotion”. But the dates of the payments were not specified.
When TNM first published the investigation in November 2022, the Congress held a press conference and accused Ashwathnarayan of giving political patronage to Chilume’s Ravikumar. Many pictures of the duo had surfaced then.
The probe found that Chilume’s field workers uploaded the data collected from voters on to a private mobile application – Digital Sameeksha, which Chilume proclaimed to be a replacement for the Election Commission’s voter registration applications like Garuda and Voter Helpline App. “The data already entered on the App is allegedly available on a foreign (possibly Chinese or East European) server and requests for handover from police are pending,” read Amlan Biswas’s report.
“While this also underlines that the ECI’s apps themselves have not been breached, it is a no brainer to conclude that shifting to private BLOs by BBMP officials has jeopardised the election data collection process as the efficacy of any app is limited to its users,” the report added.
The probe has found training videos on YouTube which specified the data collected by Chilume’s field workers in its door-to-door exercise. “The App has booth level data, Forms 6, 7, 8 and a separate online form for personal details (including mobile number, Aadhaar card, Voter ID, address, type of accommodation, economic status, caste, sub-caste and mother tongue besides sections on political opinion and voting inclination) built into it as seen from the training video screenshots,” read the report.
In addition to the data collected on the mobile application, the probe into Chilume’s activities has found physical forms 6, 7, and 8 in their office in Bengaluru that were filled up by unsuspecting voters. Form 6, 7, and 8 are crucial election-related documents that deal with the registration and deletion of voters from the electoral roll. “It thus appears that Chilume Trust was planning something much more pervasive than mere data collection and SVEEP. The complainant has stated that Chilume Trust was aiming to sell data to political parties for commercial gain,” stated the report.
Watch a conversation between Dhanya Rajendran and Anna Isaac on the story