Former Karnataka Minister and senior Congress leader Krishna Byre Gowda said lack of money can cost a candidate an election. Speaking to The News Minute, the five-time MLA, who is contesting from the Byatarayanapura constituency in Bengaluru, admitted that without money, it’s difficult to win elections. “Money can’t win you elections but lack of money can cost you an election,” he said, observing that the role of money has grown exponentially over the years. “The kind of money we are talking about is alarmingly shameful in the kind of effect it has on elections,” the Congress leader said.
Krishna also spoke about Chilume Trust, a private agency that was illegally collecting voter data in several constituencies in Bengaluru. He said, “There is a space for private agencies in democracy and voter outreach. The dangerous thing here is to give them access to the electoral voter list and data associated with it. If you authorise these agencies to add and delete voters, then it becomes a problem. Also if you allow these agencies to map voters with various other data points, like their telephone numbers, their income status, their social media profile, and on top of that you overlay Aadhaar which becomes a connecting point, then it becomes very dangerous. Then you can play with these people based on their identity and cultural background. It becomes voter manipulation.”
He went on to allege that Chilume Trust was not only given a wide range of access to collect voters’ personal information but also access to the voters list itself. Stating that there is fear that the voter list is prone to manipulation, Krishna alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been claiming that it has managed to influence deletion and addition of a certain number of voters in the Byatarayanapura constituency.
“In a large constituency like mine, you can’t expect me to go verifying the genuinity of each deletion and addition on the voters list. It’s beyond me. We just trust the EC to do the job,” he said. “But if the EC is failing in maintaining the integrity of the voters list and allowing individuals and agencies to manipulate it by deleting names wrongly and adding ghost or proxy or illegal names, then there is no meaning to the election.”
Speaking about senior BJP leaders like Jagadish Shettar and Laxman Savadi crossing over to the Congress and whether elections had become about the winnability of candidates rather than political ideology, Krishna said, “Everyone is not beholden or indoctrinated to a certain position ideologically. One can have a change of heart. And the time to have a change of heart is at the time of elections.” He, however, said changing parties after getting elected on a party ticket for the sake of power is unfortunate and degrading. In 2019, the Congress-JD(S) government collapsed in Karnataka after 17 MLAs belonging to the Congress and JD(S) defected to the BJP.
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