Karnataka SIR Row Escalates As Congress, BJP-JD(S) Trade Complaints Over Form 7 Voter Deletion Applications

Bengaluru, Oct 5: The SIR battle in Karnataka has intensified, with both ruling Congress and opposition NDA partners BJP and JD(S) lodging complaints against each other.

While the police have registered FIRs against those who filed Form-7 for deletion of names from the electoral lists in Malleswaram, Balki, Belagavi and Ballari, based on the complaints registered by the Congress workers, the BJP-JD(S) combine have lodged a complaint with the Chief Election Officer (CEO) over the Congress move and sought a clarification over submission of Form 7.

CEO clarifies on voter deletion

Meanwhile, Karnataka CEO Anbukumar has clarified that no names had been deleted from the electoral list based on Form-7, and the verification was still underway. At the moment, there were 4.5 crore voters in the State, while 45 lakh voters had been served with notice by the EC for discrepancies. Once the final list of voters is ready, it would be distributed among all the political parties for verification.

Taking a dig at Congress allegations, Anbukumar said that one could not make wild allegations based on the rumours. The Election Commission was acting independently, and the process for enrolling new voters was also underway. Over nine lakh new applicants had registered themselves to be enrolled into the electoral, which is being verified. The Commission had not lodged any complaint with the police, he added.

FIRs trigger BJP protests

Meanwhile, based on the Congress complaint, the police have registered FIRs against those who filed Form 7 with the BLOs. In Ballari and Balki, the persons who filed FIRs were arrested, evoking sharp reaction from the local BJP units, who staged protests in front of respective SP offices. In Ballari, Ballari City Corporation opposition leader Srinivas Mothkar was arrested for filing 7,561 Form 7s.

The Ballari BJP leaders, including former MLA Somashekhar Reddy, alleged that the DC was responsible for all the confusion that resulted in filing Form 7 in bulk.

"During the early stage of SIR, the party BLAs had started preparing Form 7 and tried to hand it over to the BLOs. However, they had a standing instruction from the DC not to accept the Form 7 applications. When we went and spoke to the DC, we were asked to submit all the Form 7 together, so that the process would be easy. During the last days of SIR, we submitted all the Form 7 together, getting it signed by a few people. Now, we are being held accountable for that. They should have told us how many Form 7s a person could sign," he alleged.

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NDA delegation meets CEO

Back in Bengaluru, an NDA delegation led by opposition leader R Ashok and Union Minister H D Kumaraswamy met CEO Anbukumar and registered their protest against arresting their party workers and sought clarification about Form 7 submission.

Anbukumar assured them that the Election Commission had no role in filing FIRs, as they had not lodged any police complaint.

Anbukumar assured the NDA leaders that the Commission would act impartially and the first eligible voters list would be handed over to them by Oct 27 for further clarifications.