9,746 Voter IDs, Printer Recovered From Bengaluru Flat
With just days before Karnataka goes to polls, the Election Commission revealed in a late night press briefing that it has found 9,746 voter ID cards from an apartment in Jalahalli area, Bengaluru.
On preliminary verification, the voter cards were found to be genuine, while the counterfoils were to be verified through investigation, Kumar said. Five laptops and one printer were also found in the apartment, he added.
An FIR has been registered, and further investigations will be conducted. The situation is being closely monitored by the Election Commission. Appropriate action will be taken.Sanjiv Kumar, Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka
“There were two large steel trunks with counterfoil strips resembling acknowledgement slips of Form 6 used for addition of names into the electoral rolls. These have photographs and a printed number in magenta colour. This is different from the officially available Form 6 which has no printed number,” he said.
Three observers from the poll panel were visiting the flat in the constituency, which has a total of 4,35,439 voters, Kumar said.
Along with Kumar, the District Election Officer and the city's civic body Commissioner M Maheshwar Rao, the city Police Commissioner T Suneel Kumar had visited the location where the voter cards were found.
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EC Has Taken An Extraordinary Step: Piyush Goyal
Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday, 11 May said that the Election Commission has taken an extraordinary step by postponing the election in Rajarajeshwari Nagar constituency where the voter IDs were seized.
EC Defers Voting in RR Nagar After Voter IDs Seized
The Election Commission on Friday, 11 May, deferred the polling for the RR Nagar seat in Karnataka Assembly to 28 May after thousands of voter cards were seized from a flat in the area.
Read the full EC order here.
EC Defers Decision
The Election Commission on Thursday, 10 May, night deferred a decision on the recovery of nearly 10,000 voter I-cards from a flat in Rajrajeshwari Nagar Assembly seat of poll-bound Karnataka even as it sought fresh information from the state election machinery.
Highly-placed sources in the Commission said prima facie it seems that most of the voter I-cards recovered were "genuine". But the reason as to why they were found in the flat is still being ascertained.
The Commission, the sources said, deliberated on the issue and decided to seek more information from the state election administration before arriving at a conclusion.
If the EC finds that a fraud was involved, it could even cancel election to the constituency. Even in case, if the EC is able to ascertain that attempt was made to stop people from voting, it can cancel the poll.
Congress Candidate from Rajarajeshwari Constituency Booked
The police, on Thursday, 10 May, booked N Munirathna Naidu, the Congress candidate from Rajarajeshwari (RR) constituency, in connection with the case.
"He (Naidu) was named as an accused in the FIR registered on Thursday on the basis of a complaint over the recovery of the voter ID cards from the apartment," Additional Commissioner of Police (West) Bijay Kumar Singh told IANS.
Naidu is also an outgoing legislator from the same constituency, and he was to contest in the 12 May Karnataka Assembly polls.