Mayor polls: Devangere Congress says BJP manipulating voters' list

DEVANGERE: Leader of opposition in the Davangere City Corporation A Nagaraj on Friday expressed anguish over the BJP for manipulation of the voters' list drafted for the election to the post of mayor and deputy mayor.

Addressing a press conference in the city, he alleged that several non-resident MLC's have got their names enrolled in the Davangere voters' list just to ensure that BJP nominees become mayor and deputy mayor through the backdoor. He further said that minister R Shankar has got his vote enrolled in Ranebennur and voted in recently held elections there, for which his party has got documentary proof provided by Tahsildar.

"The BJP is stating that R Shankar's name is enrolled online in the Davangere voters list. However there are no records pertaining to the inclusion of Shankar's name for which we have got documentary evidence", he said.

"A minister having his names enrolled at two constituencies is an offence and we will ensure that Shankar loses his MLC membership along with his minister's post. We will be fighting a case in the High Court in case he comes to vote'', he said.

Congress also staged a dharna in front of Davangere corporation when they came to know that the names of the non-resident MLCs R Shankar, Chidananda Gowda were found in the voters' list . It can be recalled that during polls too, BJP had included the names of MLCs Tejaswini Ramesh, N Ravikumar, YA Narayanaswamy and others by giving them local addresses that allowed them to vote in the Mayor elections, which was questioned in the Karnataka High Court.