Bengaluru, Sep 20 (IANS) Following Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s announcement regarding the ‘Vote Chori’ allegations in connection with the Aland Assembly segment raised by Rahul Gandhi, the Karnataka government on Saturday issued an order for the formation of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the charges. The SIT will be headed by senior IPS officer B.K. Singh.
The team led by B.K. Singh had earlier secured the conviction of former JD(S) MP Prajwal Revanna, the grandson of former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, in the sex CD and rape case.
B.K. Singh is currently serving as the Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Administration in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). He is also in charge of the Economic Offences Wing at the CID. The SIT probing the Vote Chori allegations will also include SP Sydulu Adavat from the Cyber Crime Department (CCD) and SP Shubhanvita from the Special Inquiry Division (SED) of the CID.
The SIT has been vested with the authority to function as a police station. It has been directed to investigate the Aland case as well as other related criminal cases already lodged, and any that may be filed in the future, in different police stations across the state. All such cases will be transferred to the SIT.
The SIT will function under the supervision of the CID Chief. It has been instructed to complete the probe expeditiously and submit its report to the jurisdictional court, while also forwarding a copy to the government through the DGP and IGP.
The case registered at the Aland police station in Kalaburagi district in 2023 under IPC Sections 182, 419, 464, and 465 will now be taken over by the SIT.
Aland Congress MLA B.R. Patil from Aland Constituency in Kalaburagi district has complained that in his constituency, the names of 6,670 voters were dropped across 256 polling booths to the Election Commission. When the EC probed, it was found that applications were received from government websites asking to drop their names from the Voters’ list. Among these requests, the EC has verified that 24 applications were processed and names were deleted.
But, KAS officer Mamatha Kumari had lodged a complaint with Aland police station that when the rest 5,994 applications were verified, persons with ulterior motives had submitted applications without the knowledge of actual voters using different mobile phone numbers. Hence, the government has constituted the SIT team to probe the matter, the order says.
The Karnataka government has announced that the ‘Vote Chori’ allegations in connection with the Aland Assembly segment raised by the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, will be probed by the Special Investigation Team (SIT).
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah made a statement in this regard while answering a question in this regard at Gadag city on Saturday. “Rahul Gandhi has pointed out that about 6,000 names of voters were deleted in the Aland constituency, and this is true. An SIT probe will be conducted into the voter fraud case in Aland,” Siddaramaiah said, answering a question on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s allegations regarding voter fraud.
Criticising the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) clarifications and denial of charges regarding ‘vote chori’ by the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, Minister for RDPR, IT and BT Priyank Kharge and Aland MLA B.R. Patil, in a joint press conference dubbed the claims by ECI as a complete lie.
Speaking to reporters in Bengaluru on Friday, Minister Priyank Kharge stated, “After Rahul Gandhi’s press conference, the Election Commission is now speaking as if it was they who discovered and stopped voter fraud. They are claiming that they themselves halted the deletion of voters from the electoral rolls. This is a complete lie.”
Congress MLA from Aland, B.R. Patil, had stated, “I congratulate Rahul Gandhi for bringing the Aland voter fraud issue to national attention, and also thank Priyank Kharge for standing in support of me.”
–IANS
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