BENGALURU: The
flying squad of the
Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday seized thousands of
voter identity cards from a flat in Jalahalli, west Bengaluru, which falls under
Rajarajeshwari Nagar (
RR Nagar) assembly constituency.
Flying squad official Byre Gowda said: “Whatever we have counted so far are valid IDs and are about 10 to 15 years old. We’ll check whether there are fake ones too.”
The incident was brought to light by Jagadish Ramachandra, son of GH Ramachandra who’s contesting on a JD(S) ticket from RR Nagar. He visited the apartment during campaigning. “Flat no. 115 at SLV Park View in Jalahalli looked like a mini-BBMP office. Apart from two aluminium boxes filled with ID cards, there were two printers and six laptops,” said Jagadish. He alleged there could be 50,000 fake voter ID cards and the list included the ID card of BBMP joint commissioner Tippeswamy.
Chief electoral officer Sanjiv Kumar, who visited the apartment later in the night, confirmed 9,746 valid ID cards have been seized. All these cards belong to RR Nagar constituency.
Mamatha Vasudev, BJP corporator from JP Park, said they could see remains of several IDs burnt outside the apartment.
BJP, JD(S) leaders demand action
The incident snowballed into a political storm with BJP and JD(S) workers joining hands to target Congress MLA of RR Nagar, N Munirathna who is seeking re-election from the seat. BJP leader Sadananda Gowda and JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda visited the area and demanded either removal of the candidate or postponement of the election.
“We are cross-checking the documents. A decision on registering a case will be taken later,” police said.
Sources said there are chances of miscreants collecting ID cards from voters by giving freebies to support voting to a particular candidate.
Fake voter ID scam: BJP leader...