'They were never dead': Karnataka's fake voter-deletion racket targeted Muslims and Dalits

BENGALURU: Karnataka's chief electoral officer has ordered criminal action against those who submitted bulk Form 7 applications to delete voters' names during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, after an inquiry found that thousands of the objections were filed with faked death certificates and pre-printed voter details. The order, issued on October 1 by Chief Electoral Officer V Anbukkumar, directs electoral registration officers across all 224 Assembly constituencies to take legal action against anyone who knowingly made false statements in Forms 6, 6A, 7 and 8. It cites Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which punishes false declarations connected with electoral rolls with imprisonment, a fine, or both, following an inquiry under Rule 20 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. The crackdown follows a protest by Chief Minister DK Shivakumar outside the CEO's office on Thursday, where he demanded an FIR over what he called 'electoral fraud' during the revision exercise. Shivakumar alleged that applications seeking the deletion of 45 lakh voters had been filed across the state and accused BJP and JD(S) workers of being behind what he termed 'a big conspiracy.' He claimed the drive disproportionately targeted minorities, Dalits and tribal communities. The numbers tell a story of industrial-scale targeting. In Babaleshwar in Vijayapura district, represented by minister MB Patil, 1,373 Form 7 applications arrived on a single day -- 1,363 of them from just 10 individuals, largely targeting Muslim voters outside the objectors' own polling stations. In Bhalki in Bidar district, more than 1,700 names were objected to in a day by around 30 people. Shivakumar said 13,000 applications were submitted and then withdrawn in two Ballari constituencies, and 13,000 more in Vijayapura outside Babaleshwar. In several cases, the names, EPIC numbers and other particulars of the voters proposed for deletion were pre-printed on the forms, with only the objector's details filled in by hand. Separately, the district election officer in Vijayapura has ordered an inquiry after followers of Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, an expelled BJP MLA, filed Form 7 objections allegedly using fudged death certificates to delete voters' names. In Mysuru's Narasimharaja constituency, a complaint was filed after a booth-level officer contacted a social worker about a Form 7 objection raised against him and 28 other voters. The CEO has directed that deletion requests now be approved only in cases of death -- with a mandatory death certificate upload -- or duplicate entries. Officials in Vijayanagar, Vijayapura, Mudigere, Belagavi and Bidar, which received unusually high numbers of deletion applications, have been told to personally verify each claim. The right to vote begins at the registry. What the Karnataka episode exposes is an attempt to win elections not by persuading voters, but by erasing them -- and to aim that eraser first at those with the least power to resist.