'Rs 80 Per Deletion': Aland SIT Probe Backs Congress 'Vote Theft' Charge

New Delhi: Voters in Aland, Karnataka, may have been targeted for Rs 80 a name, according to the Special Investigative Team (SIT) of the Karnataka government set up to examine alleged instances of voter list fraud. The revelations add credibility to the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi's longstanding claims about systemic voter fraud.

The SIT's Rs 80 per deleted voter figure, reported by various media outlets over October 22 and 23, perhaps indicate an organised operation, not a one-off mistake or administrative error. The worrying signal is that voter deletion has turned into a paid gig economy crime, done casually and without thought for citizens' right to vote.

While the SIT is still examining the money trail – where the Rs 4.8 lakh to fund deletion of 6,018 voters came from – it claims to have established who got the money, and alleges Kalaburagi locals Mohammad Ashfaq and Md Akram were part of the chain.

SIT findings so far

The Indian Express reports that these two private operators, according to the SIT, ran a data centre with employees working as data operators, and placed requests on behalf of voters to delete their names in the Aland assembly constituency electoral rolls.

During its ground-level investigation of the 6,018 deleted voters, the SIT could identify 24 voters as having moved away. In other words, over 99% of the voter deletions were fraudulent – of people who might have voted, had their names remained on the voter lists drawn up by the Election Commission.

Since the SIT has also been able to confirm monetary transactions related to the deletions – the Rs 80 paid per voter deleted – it would appear that the deletions were part of a deliberate effort to manipulate the voter rolls.

Also read: Technology of 'Vote Chori' Explained

Ashfaq was previously suspected of involvement in voter fraud and questioned in 2023 by Karnataka police. He was let off when he shared his electronic devices with the police. Now, police say, he has left India for Dubai. But an investigation into his communications has shown that he was in touch with "Akram and three others", The Indian Express has reported.

Together, they allegedly ran a data centre where people were tasked with sending applications to delete voters from the Election Commission's records. All of it was apparently done using falsified documents and without the knowledge of the voters whose identity was being misused.

According to The Indian Express, the SIT has "probed 75 mobile numbers, belonging to people as varied as a poultry farm worker to relatives of policemen, that were used to register with the Election Commission portal to place requests for changes in voter lists of Aland".

The newspaper also reported, "The SIT is still to determine how access was gained to the EC portal using fake  credentials, to make the voter deletion requests ... neither those whose credentials were used to access the EC portal, nor the voters on whose behald the applications were made, were in the know."

In October the SIT raided Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subhash Guttedar's premises in Gubbi, as well as some of his associates, suspecting their involvement. There were reports that burnt documents were found outside Guttedar's home.

But the BJP leader has denied a role and blamed rival Patil's political ambition for the charges against himself. He has also clarified that the burnt papers were related to traditional Diwali cleaning of homes and not an effort to conceal or destroy 'evidence'.

Why 'small' numbers matter

The enormity of this alleged fraud is not immediately apparent in the figures, for 6,018 is a seemingly insignificant figure in a country of over 63 crore voters (Lok Sabha election, 2024) and over 5.3 crore (2023 Karnataka assembly election), according to the Election Commission of India (ECI).

However, the numbers must be seen in the context of recent voting patterns in both Aland and Karnataka. In the 2023 assembly election, the winning margin of the Congress party candidate was 10,348 votes. Guttedar, the BJP candidate, polled 78,701 votes, while Bhojaraj (B.R. Patil) polled 88,981. The voter turnout in Aland was relatively high in 2023, at over 72%, making it a tough fight despite the healthy margin for an assembly election.

However, at least eight constituencies were won or lost on fewer than 1,000 votes in the same 2023 election in Karnataka. In four other constituencies, the same ECI data show, the margin of victory was under 2,000 votes. In 34 more constituencies, the victory margin was below 5,994 votes – the number of alleged fraudulent voter deletions.

Karnataka has 224 assembly constituencies, which means that the margins were below those allegedly fraudulently deleted in 20% of constituencies.

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What is more, bipolar contests are increasingly the norm in state elections, and victory margins have been narrowing over time. One instance of the fragility of numbers in a first-past-the-post system was the Madhya Pradesh assembly election in 2018. The Congress recorded a slightly lower vote share, at 40.8%, and the BJP got 49.02% of the vote share, amounting to a difference of roughly 37,000 votes. However, the Congress won more seats – 114 against the BJP's 109 – and thus could form a (short-lived) government in the state.

That precarity of voters makes every election a high-stake battle and is also why opposition parties, especially the Congress, make a hue and cry over what may seem like a small number of voters on paper.

Voters matter most in democracy

But the primary issue, from the perspective of both parties and citizens is the denial of the right to vote to valid voters. This is an issue the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi have consistently been raising, even organising elaborate press conferences providing data and statistics on the alleged voter deletions in Karnataka.

The Hindu reported in early September that a Congress worker had stumbled upon the alleged fraudulent deletions in Aland when his family and others received suspicious notices informing them that the process of being off the rolls had been initiated for 47 voters in his village. That led to a wider investigation by the SIT into the charges.

It is noteworthy that the 5,994 deleted voters were not fake – they are, according to the Karnataka SIT, legitimate voters who do exist and were denied the chance to vote.

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