The probe report ordered by the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) into the illegal collection of voter data by a private trust in Bengaluru, has found that an Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) in the city emailed the private trust lists of names of young voters with their phone numbers. The ERO of KR Puram in Bengaluru sent out the email with the list of phone numbers to Chilume, the private trust at the centre of the ECI probe, in 2019 ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. “There is evidence culled from old emails of BBMP where Chilume had been emailed lists of young voters with their phone numbers by ERO KR Pura on 10 Jan 2019. The sharing of phone numbers of voters with a private organisation is itself a serious violation of procedure,” the probe report said.
A year earlier, a BJP candidate Nandiesha Reddy from the KR Pura constituency, had paid Chilume Rs 18 lakh for a voter data survey ahead of the 2018 state Assembly elections.
The report was compiled by Amlan Biswas, the Regional Commissioner of Bengaluru division, and exposed the involvement of BBMP officials in facilitating Chilume Trust's unlawful collection of voter data. The report, which was released on April 15, also recommended a separate police investigation to thoroughly investigate the matter.
The probe report was ordered after TNM and Kannada news outlet Pratidvani investigated Chilume's involvement in large-scale voter data theft in Bengaluru. The private trust fraudulently obtained voter data under the pretext of revising electoral rolls for the upcoming Karnataka elections, using a Government Order. However, they went on to forge identity cards to pass off their employees as block-level officers (BLOs) and other officials.
Furthermore, it established connections between Chilume, CN Ashwathnarayan, the Minister of Skill Development, and Hombale Films, a renowned film production house known for movies like KGF and Kantara.
The report also revealed that despite a complaint filed against Chilume on September 20, 2022, Rangappa, the Special Commissioner (Election) of BBMP, withheld this information from BBMP Commissioner Tushar Giri Nath. Tushar, who also serves as the District Election Officer (DEO), only learned of the complaint against Chilume at the end of October 2022 when approached by TNM reporters investigating the illegal collection of voter data.