Bengaluru: Bruhat Bengaluru Mahangara Palike (BBMP) Chief Commissioner Tushar Girinath on Monday suspended three Additional Revenue Officers (AROs) and ordered a departmental inquiry in response to a probe report submitted by the Additional District Election Officers (ADEOs) into the voter data theft case. The four ADEOs from each of the four parliamentary segments who were tasked with looking into the allegations of voter data theft against the NGO Chilume sent in their report on Monday November 21.
Bheema Shankar from Chikpete, Chandrashekhar from Mahadevapura, and Sohail S. from Shivajinagar are the three suspended officials. “The three officials were accused of aiding Chilume with fake ID cards while serving as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and Booth Level Committee (BLC) officials,” said Girinath. “In the coming days, other officials are likely to face action. There are four reports available to us in this regard,” he added.
The Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer’s office on Monday announced that it had ordered an investigation and that two FIRs had been filed at the Halasuru Gate and Kadugodi police stations. The officer denied that names of members of a particular community, religion, or caste were being removed, claiming that they do not have the authority to do so. They claimed that the names were deleted only due to reasons such as ‘dead, shifted or those having multiple names.’
