Karnataka Public Works Minister Satish Jarkiholi has defended the Special Intensive Revision of the state’s electoral rolls, saying the exercise was conducted properly and that the Congress has no objection to it in Karnataka. The remark puts the minister at odds with his party’s national campaign against the revision.
Jarkiholi said the process had been carried out systematically and that staff were given proper training. The revision, he argued, was necessary to identify voters who had shifted residence or died, and those whose names appeared in more than one place. He said the party’s objections were confined to West Bengal, Maharashtra and Bihar.
The BJP seized on the comments. In a post on social media, it said Congress leaders were increasingly contradicting Rahul Gandhi’s opposition to the revision, and that the minister’s defence of deletions showed even Congress leaders accepted the need for a clean voter roll. Karnataka was the first state where Rahul Gandhi had raised allegations of vote theft, the party said.
State Congress leaders pushed back. Party chief B.K. Hariprasad said the revision was meant “entirely to uproot the democratic process” and described the electoral roll as the foundation of democracy. He alleged that close to one crore names had been removed in Karnataka, the largest such figure, because the BJP lacks a base in the state. Priyank Kharge said he was not sure what information the minister had, and cited a Chittapur booth where, he said, 40 people from a single community were targeted and pre-printed Form 7 applications were available in bulk.
Accounts of the scale of the deletions differ. One account of Jarkiholi’s remarks referred to about one lakh voters, while the state party chief spoke of close to one crore and another report said the minister had justified the removal of nearly one crore names. Karnataka’s Chief Electoral Officer, V. Anbu Kumar, said not a single name had been deleted from the draft roll merely because Form 7 was filed in bulk, and that every removal followed verification and a speaking order.
The controversy comes days before the Congress and its allies planned a rally at Delhi’s Ramlila Grounds, billed as a show of strength for the INDIA bloc, preceded by a programme at party president Mallikarjun Kharge’s residence that is to be streamed on the social media accounts of bloc partners. Jarkiholi, a Siddaramaiah loyalist, has drawn controversy before with remarks on ministers being honey-trapped and on the origins of the word “Hindu”, which were seen as playing into the BJP’s hands.