Ahead of polls, storm over voter data 'theft'

Maqsood Maniyar | NT

Bengaluru:

A raging controversy has broken out over alleged attempts by the ruling BJP to gather sensitive details of voters in the state ahead of the 2023 Assembly polls with the opposition Congress party on Thursday demanding that Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai be removed from his post and even be arrested over what they claim is a voter-based fraud.

The Opposition party even submitted a letter to the city commissioner of police demanding that Bommai and State Higher Education Minister CN Ashwath Narayan be charged for the offence under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). They were referring to a joint investigation conducted by the website,

The News Minute and Pratidvani, which reportedly found out that the NGO, Chilume Educational Cultural and Rural Development Institute had collected personal details of thousands of voters in Bengaluru city citing a Government Order (GO), which was later withdrawn. The details included name, religion, caste, gender, marital status and the like. Cumulatively, the details amount to invaluable data which could give prospective candidates a leg up in the polls.

Interestingly, Chilume did this under the SVEEP (Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation) programme and uploaded the details not on the government's Garuda website but on their personal app. Chilume workers were found to have posed as Block Level Officers (BLOs). The BBMP and the Election Commission (EC) have been accused of looking the other way as this happened.