Could ‘vote chori’ actually be happening in Karnataka just like Rahul Gandhi alleged?
Well, Karnataka CID’s SIT just made its first arrest - a 27-year-old man from West Bengal. This after the Special Investigation Team found irregular applications for deletion of names from the voter list of Aland Assembly constituency ahead of the 2023 state polls.
Remember, Aland was one of the 2 constituencies mentioned by Lok Sabha’s Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi at his September 18 presser on electoral fraud and “vote chori”.
Bapi Adya was arrested on Wednesday night from West Bengal and produced in a local court in Bengaluru on Thursday. The SIT said they zeroed in on Adya after following the money trail for payments made by a Kalaburagi data centre, allegedly for OTP’s (One-Time Passwords) to illegally access the online portal and apps of the ECI.
Furthermore, the SIT told the court that Adya provided “OTP bypass” services for the vote deletion activity. The bypass services helped access the ECI’s online services using fake identities and phone numbers for the purpose of illegal voter deletion requests.
A report by the Indian Express stated that Police found 75 such phone numbers from 17 states. Further adding that the numbers belonged mostly to people who were unaware of their number’s misuse. The report states that over 3,000 fake numbers were put down on deletion applications for 5,994 voters of Aland.
Following Adya’s remand in police custody, the SIT is hoping to learn how Adya was able to trigger the “OTP bypass” after seizing two laptops and a mobile phone from the accused.
