Siddaramaiah said the Election Commission of India (ECI) was “protecting vote thieves” by refusing to provide crucial technical details to investigators despite repeated requests, and demanded that the data be handed over to CID within a week.
Bengaluru
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday strongly endorsed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s explosive allegations of large-scale voter deletions, saying the evidence revealed in the Aland constituency is part of a nationwide conspiracy to subvert democracy.
Siddaramaiah said the revelations made by Gandhi showed how Indian democracy was being systematically undermined. “The Aland case in Kalaburagi is not an isolated incident. It is only a glimpse of a much larger conspiracy to manipulate electoral rolls and deny citizens their fundamental right to vote,” he said.
Between February 2022 and February 2023, 6,018 Form-7 applications were filed in Aland seeking to delete voter names. On inquiry, only 24 were genuine while 5,994 were fraudulent, Siddaramaiah pointed out. “Entire families were targeted, stolen voter details and fake logins were used, and mobile numbers from outside Karnataka were entered to impersonate applicants,” he alleged.
He also criticised the ECI for not cooperating with the Karnataka CID probe. “For 18 months, CID has sought IP logs, device IDs and OTP trails—basic data needed to trace those behind the fraud. Yet the ECI has stonewalled 18 reminders. By withholding evidence, it is shielding the guilty instead of safeguarding democracy,” he charged.
Calling the pattern “systematic and centralised,” Siddaramaiah said similar operations were seen in Maharashtra, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. “This is about the sanctity of every vote. Congress will not allow Vote Chori to succeed,” he declared.
