"No wrongful deletion of electors in Aland": Election Commission on Rahul Gandhi's "voti chori" claim

New Delhi [India], September 20 (ANI): The Election Commission has refuted the “vote chori” allegations made by the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, claiming that “no deletion of votes can be done online by any member of the public.”

During a press conference on Thursday, Gandhi had alleged that around 6 thousand votes were deleted fraudulently by unknown people who used software and impersonated real voters in the Aland constituency in Karnataka.

The poll body on Friday issued a point-wise press note stating that, “No wrongful deletion of electors in Aland”. EC stated that no name is deleted from the roll without issuing a notice to the affected person.

“Although Elector of the constituency can fill Form 7 online to apply for deletion of an entry from that particular constituency, it does not mean that the entry gets automatically deleted merely by submitting the Form 7. As per Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, no name is deleted from the roll without issuing a notice to the affected person and giving him an opportunity of being heard.”, the note stated.

Election Commission revealed that while over 6,000 applications were submitted to delete names from the voters’ list in Aland, only 24 were found to be valid and approved. The remaining 5,994 were rejected after verification. An FIR was filed by the Election Commission itself to investigate the suspicious deletion attempts, and a full inquiry is underway.

An FIR (No. 26/2023) was registered at the Aland Police Station on February 21, 2023, under the supervision of the Electoral Registration Officer, Aland.

“In the case of Aland, Karnataka, 6,018 applications in Form 7 for deletion were submitted online. On verification, only 24 applications were found to be genuine, while 5,994 were found to be incorrect. Accordingly, 24 applications were accepted, and the 5,994 incorrect applications were rejected. Suspecting the genuineness of such a large number of applications for deletion, an inquiry was conducted & subsequently an FIR (No. 26/2023, Aland Police Station, dated 21.02.2023) was registered by the Electoral Registration Officer, Aland. Based on the instructions of the ECI, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Karnataka, handed over all available information to the Commission to the Superintendent of Police, Kalaburagi district, on 06.09.2023 for completing the investigation,” the press note reads.

Earlier on Thursday, the Election Commission of India (ECI) fact-checked “vote theft” claims made by Leader of Opposition (LoP) Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi earlier, and stated that the allegations made by Rahul Gandhi are “incorrect” and “baseless”.

A day earlier, Congress MP and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi held a news conference in New Delhi and accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of protecting “people who are destroying Indian democracy”.

The Congress leader claimed that at least 6,000 votes have been deleted in the Aland Assembly constituency segment in Karnataka. Earlier, in a previous press conference, Rahul Gandhi had alleged that the assembly segment of Mahadevpura in the same state also had fraud votes.

“In Aland, Karnataka, 6,018 votes, somebody tried to delete these votes. We don’t know the total number of votes deleted in the 2023 elections, but somebody got caught. It was caught, by most crimes, by a coincidence. What happened was that the Booth Level officer noticed that her uncle’s vote has been deleted. When she checked she saw that her neighbour had deleted the vote,” he added. (ANI)

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