The Congress party on Thursday, November 17, accused the state BJP government of facilitating widespread voter fraud and demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai. Following a story that appeared in TNM about a private entity being accorded permission by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to collect data from voters, the Congress party hurriedly convened a press conference on Thursday morning. All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary and Karnataka-in-charge Randeep Surjewala said that members of the private entity Chilume, who committed fraud by impersonating booth level officers (BLO), did so with the full knowledge of the Chief Minister. “The responsibility lies with BBMP-incharge minister Bommai, and he must resign for having a latent knowledge about this.” He called for registering a FIR against Bommai for enabling voter fraud.
The BBMP withdrew the permission given to Chilume saying they had violated the terms of the permission, soon after TNM published the story.
Surjewala also said the Chilume which conducted this survey, was linked to two other private entities, and one Krishnappa Ravikumar was associated with all the three entities. “The proximity of Ravikumar to a senior minister and a former deputy CM in the Bommai government to Ravikumar must be investigated. What is the relationship between Ashwathnarayan, Bommai and these three entities?” he questioned.
“I want to tell all Kannadigas, your vote is being stolen. The election process is being corrupted. A private entity by the name of Chilume applied to conduct voter awareness. First, permission is given for Mahadevapura constituency and then to all 28 constituencies in Bengaluru. This entity with zero experience wants to do this exercise where it is required to go to hundreds of houses and offers to do it for free. The description on their website says that they do EVM (electronic voter machine) preparations for political parties. I have never heard of a company which does political preparation for parties. The same company also runs a private voter survey app called Digital Sameeksha,” Surjewala explained.
The Congress party accused the Bommai government of allowing private persons to impersonate government officers, collecting personal information and uploading this on an app and selling the data. “The dishonest misappropriation of property, criminal breach of trust and privacy is now apparent by Bommai, BBMP officials and Election Commission of India,” he said.
He questioned how this entity was selected without issuing an advertisement and who recommended it. “Why did they not suspect anything when the entity offered to cover the entire city for free? How can contracted employees of a private entity masquerade as government employees of Karnataka and get BLO ID cards? Is this a concerted attempt to steal the elections?” he asked.
Opposition leader Siddamaramaiah said the entity collected enough information to allow the addition and deletion of voters. “The private people working on this who have no experience have been issued with BLO cards. According to the Section 13B(2) of The Representation of the People Act, only a government, a semi-government and retired government employee can be a BLO,” he explained. “Krishnappa Ravikumar gave BLO cards to private employees. What is his intention for this impersonation? They terminated the contract saying you have violated the contract. This is an attempt by Bommai to win elections through the back door. This is manipulation of voters list and is an offence,” he said.
Siddaramaiah said they would lodge a complaint against Bommai, the BBMP Commissioner and others on Thursday.
Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president DK Shivakumar said Chilume had sub-contracted the work and had issued an advertisement saying they would pay a daily wage of Rs 1,500 and had identity cards issued to over 15,000 people across the city. “Even yesterday, there were over 2,000 people outside their office. They are also mapping buildings including empty houses and sites. All this is being done to make their candidates win elections,” he said.