Congress gave voter list work to NGO Chilume in 2017: Bommai

BENGALURU: Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Saturday rubbished opposition Congress’ allegations about tampering with voters’ data and clarified that the NGO Chilume was not given any work related to voter list revision.

In a point-by-point rebuttal to Congress’s allegations, he said voter names were deleted after taking into consideration Photo Similar Entries (PSE) data provided by the Election Commission of India, applications received and the report given by officials after door-to-door visits.

In 2017, the then Siddaramaiah government had illegally given Chilume the responsibility of carrying out voter revision work and in some cases also filling up BLOs, he stated. They are blaming the government for illegalities committed when they were in power, the CM said, responding to the Congress allegations that Chilume was used to delete Congress voters’ names.

On the allegation that the BJP government had given permission to Chilume, Bommai said it was first introduced to the pre-election process during the Congress government when Siddaramaiah was CM.
Though the voter list revision is purely the work to be undertaken by government authorities, Chilume was given the responsibility illegally by the Congress government. On September 15, 2017, the KR Puram tahsildar gave permission to Chilume to fill up BLOs for voter revision work. Chilume was also illegally empowered to carry out the revision of the voter list under the jurisdiction of BBMP when Congress was in power, he said.

On the allegation that constituencies of Congress MLAs were targeted, he said it is a pure lie. Out of the 28 constituencies in BBMP limits, of the five constituencies in which the least number of voters were dropped, three are held by Congress.

The CM also rubbished the allegation that the verification of voter list is given to a private institution. In 2017-18 during the then Congress government, Chilume was given the work and it  is proved by the documents.

Meanwhile in Mangaluru, Higher Education Minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan said he did not avail of any services from the Chilume Educational and Rural Development Trust.