Bengaluru: The Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by the Karnataka government to investigate into the `Vote Chori' allegations in Aland constituency, Kalburgi district has filed a charge sheet, inditing former BJP MLA Subhash Guttedar, his son Harshanand Guttedar and four others.
In the 22,000 page charge sheet, the SIT headed by ADGP B K Singh has said that Guttedar had used a call center in Aland to delete 5,994 votes from the voter list and paid money to the call center owner.
The call center owner Akram Pasha, his brother Aslam Pasha and relative Mohammed Ashfaq had received ₹ 4.6 lakh from Guttedar family to delete the names from voter list. They had paid ₹ 10 per OTP to a person called Adyage Basha of Nadia district, West Bengal to file online applications for deleting the names in voter list. The Aslam Pasha had charged ₹ 80 per application, the SIT has charged.
The SIT has alleged that the Election Commission had not cooperated with their investigation. However, they raided the houses of Subhash Guttedar, his children in Aland and Kalburgi and also the call center and seized laptops and mobile phones. When the SIT raided the houses of Guttedars, some of the documents had already been destroyed. However, the SIT got digital evidence of the conspiracy and financial transactions between Guttedar and Aslam Pasha, the charge sheet pointed out.
During the first round of `Vote Chori' allegations, the Congress, especially LOP Rahul Gandhi had alleged that large scale discrepancies had taken place during 2024 Parliament elections in Mahadevapura constituency. However, the charges fell flat after Mahadevapura MLA Aravind Limbavali gave a vote by vote counting for all the charges.
Just then, Aland MLA B R Patil charged that Vote Chori had taken place in his constituency during the 2023 general elections to the State Assembly itself. He charged that there were more than 6000 false requisitions for deleting names from the voter list.
As a matter of fact, the issue had already been addressed by the Election Commission in 2023 itself. The Election Commission had received over 6018 online applications for deleting names from the voters' list. When the field officers went for physical verifications, they found that 5994 applications were false and the voters were still present in their respective houses. The Returning Officers of the Election Commission retained the 5994 voters' names and deleted only 24 names from the list.
As far as Aland constituency is concerned, B R Patil and Subhash Guttedar are the arch rivals in the constituency. During the last seven elections to the Legislative Assembly, Patil has won four times, while Guttedar has won three times. None of them have won two consecutive times.
