CEC Gyanesh Kumar protecting those ‘murdering democracy’ by refusing to cooperate with Karnataka investigations; one-week ultimatum for EC to release OTP trails and IP addresses
NEW DELHI — After exploding the “atom bomb” of Vote Chori, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Thursday came out with another series of sensational revelations as how the names of voters were being deleted and added using a centralised software system, apparently like a call centre. He alleged that democracy was hijacked in the last 10 to14 years and the Election Commission was complicit in it.
He also said that the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar was protecting those who were involved in this process by refusing to divulge the details of ‘vote chori’, specifically citing the investigations being carried out by the Karnataka CID which is not being provided by the poll panel.
The Congress leader was addressing a press conference at Indira Bhawan, the AICC headquarters here, just a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated his 75th birth day on Wednesday with much fanfare. Gandhi made a detailed presentation and also presented some persons whose identity was used for deleting the voters’ names without their knowledge. He disclosed that it was a “targeted deletion” of voters mainly in ten Congress booths in Aland constituency of Karnataka, out of which the party had won on eight booths in 2018 assembly elections. Besides, he disclosed that the names of voters belonging to those communities which are traditionally opposed to the BJP like the Dalits, the Adivasis, the minorities and the OBCs, were deleted in this targeted deletion process.
The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said that it was not a coincidence but a deliberate and well-planned strategy to target the Congress supporters. He said, this was beyond any doubt now that the CEC Gyanesh Kumar was actually protecting those who were murdering democracy by not providing the required information to the Karnataka CID, which is investigating the fraudulent deletion of voters’ names from the electoral rolls.
Gandhi disclosed that the Karnataka CID had written 18 letters in 18 months to the CEC seeking certain specific information like the destination IP from where these deletion forms were filled, the device destination ports, and most importantly, the OTP trails. But the ECI has not replied to the letters as yet.
Gandhi said there was a particular pattern in the process as the first voter in the booth’s list was chosen as the person who would delete the voters, without his/her knowledge.
He cited several instances where people were shown to have got votes deleted when they had actually not done anything, proving that it was done through a software.
In one case, one woman voter Ms Godabai was shown to have deleted 12 votes. Similarly, another voter, Suryakant was shown to have deleted 12 names within 14 minutes. Another voter, Nagraj was shown to have deleted 2 votes within 36 seconds and that too in the wee hours of the morning at 4.07 am. One of these applicants for names’ deletion, Suryakant, was present during the press conference.
Gandhi also cited the example of Rajura in Maharashtra where 6,850 votes were added in a similar way. In Aland, the “vote theft”, Gandhi revealed, was detected by sheer chance as one of the BLOs noticed that the name of her uncle had been deleted by one of his neighbours. When they enquired from the neighbour, he expressed ignorance as he had actually not got the name deleted.
After digging up the matter, it was revealed that it was not the only vote that had been deleted mysteriously, but 6,018 votes in the entire Aland assembly segment had been deleted like that. The detailed investigations revealed that the process of name deletion was being done in a centralised way using some software.
Gandhi said the very fact that the CEC was refusing to share the information regarding generation of the OTPs and the IP addresses of the terminals shows that the official was trying to protect those who had done it. He hinted that they had full idea as to where the system was being operated from.
The senior Congress leader issued an ultimatum to the CEC to release the details like the OTP trials and IP addresses within a week otherwise it will be deemed that he was protecting the people who were involved in it.
Gandhi said this was not an isolated case; same things were done in Maharashtra, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh also.
On his previous threats of a ‘Hydrogen Bomb’ that would expose the government, he said that preparations for it are underway, and very soon, it will be made public once his team gathers all the proof and evidence of ‘electoral malpractices’.
Baseless: Election Commission
Meanwhile, the Election Commission has rejected Gandhi’s allegations calling them as ‘baseless and incorrect’.
It also questioned Gandhi and Congress’ understanding of the electoral process, and said that the latter’s claims of vote deletion by any ‘online tool’ were a mere misconception.
