The Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has asserted that all available information related to alleged voter deletions in the Aland assembly constituency has been handed over to the police, dismissing suggestions that any evidence is being withheld.
According to the CEO, in December 2022 the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) in Aland received 6,018 online applications through various government apps seeking deletion of names from the electoral rolls. Given the unusually large number of deletion requests, election officials—including the ERO, Assistant ERO, and Booth Level Officers (BLOs)—conducted thorough verifications. They determined that only 24 applications were valid; the remaining 5,994 were found to be incorrect or otherwise not genuine, and none of these were processed further for deletion.
An FIR was filed at Aland Police Station in Kalaburagi district on February 21, 2023, based on findings from the BLOs and ERO. Later, the CEO’s office said, acting on instructions from the Election Commission of India (ECI), it formally handed over all relevant data to the Superintendent of Police, Kalaburagi, on September 6, 2023, to assist with the investigation.
Details shared with the police reportedly include: the names of objectors, reference numbers of Form-7 deletion applications, EPIC (Elector Photo Identity Card) numbers, mobile numbers used for login as well as those given in the application, the specific app through which each request was submitted, the IP addresses, place of submission, and the dates and times of form submission and user creation.
The CEO’s office says that it has also held meetings with the investigating officer and cybersecurity experts to help review the progress of the police probing the case. It emphasized that it has continued to provide any additional assistance, documents, or information demanded by law enforcement.
The statement from the CEO is seen as a response to renewed political allegations that the Election Commission and state authorities had not acted transparently over the “vote deletion” claims raised by opposition leaders. Rahul Gandhi, among others, had accused officials of deleting hundreds of names of voters, especially in booths where his party has strong support, and called for technical logs—including device data, OTP trails, and IP logs—to be made public.
With the CEO confirming that the relevant information was shared well in advance, authorities insist there are no grounds to believe that data is being withheld. Meanwhile, political debate continues over whether further forensic analysis of the data will identify those responsible for submitting the thousands of rejected applications.