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Kalaburagi (Karnataka), October 18 (IANS) Former Karnataka BJP MLA Subhash Guttedar on Saturday termed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) raid at his residence as an attempt to divert public attention from key issues. The SIT is investigating alleged voter fraud in Aland assembly constituency in Kalaburagi district.
“The allegations of voter fraud against me are completely false. This is being done to divert people’s attention from other issues. No voter’s name was removed from around my house,” Guttedar told reporters in Kalaburagi.
Referring to reports of burnt voter lists being found near his residence, he said, “Workers had cleaned our house in view of the Diwali festival. They do not know anything about voter lists or elections. If someone had wanted to destroy such a list, they would not have done so near my residence.”
Targeting Aland Congress MLA BR Patil, Guttedar alleged that the allegations of voter fraud were fabricated. “They have brought people from their native places, taken them to Delhi, made them stand with Rahul Gandhi and made them issue statements. BR Patil is trying to get close to Rahul Gandhi to get a ministerial post,” he alleged.
Guttedar said that he has not received any official notice yet, but he will cooperate in the investigation if needed. “No development activity is taking place in the state as the treasury is empty. In this background, the Congress government is creating controversy,” he claimed.
The SIT, which is probing alleged voter fraud following complaints raised by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, conducted an overnight raid in Aland city and recovered documents, voter ID cards and burnt voter lists that were allegedly thrown into the Amarja river.
The SIT team, deployed in Kalaburagi for the last five days, first raided a call center and several houses, seized seven laptops and around 1,000 voter ID cards. On Friday night, it raided Guttedar’s residence, as well as his bar allegedly linked to him and the house of a chartered accountant.
Investigators also reportedly found stacks of burnt and partially burnt election-related documents near Guttedar’s residence. Preliminary findings suggest that the material was loaded onto a goods truck and dumped into the Amarja River.
The SIT, led by SP Subhanvita, along with the local police, has launched an operation to retrieve the dumped documents and is investigating whether the call center was used to manipulate voter lists. An official statement has not yet been issued by the SIT.
Earlier, Rahul Gandhi had alleged that during the 2023 assembly elections, an attempt was made to delete more than 6,000 votes in Aland. He claimed that the matter came to light when a booth level official noticed that his uncle’s name had been removed and detected irregularities in the manipulated voter list.
However, the Election Commission of India (ECI) rejected Gandhi’s allegations, clarifying that online vote deletion by individuals is not possible and termed the claims of mass voter deletion as “false and baseless”.
The Congress-led Karnataka government has ordered a SIT investigation into the matter.
Congress MLA BR Patil currently represents the Aland seat, while Subhash Guttedar, who lost the 2023 election, previously held the seat as a BJP MLA.
–IANS
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