South First looks back at some complaints that went unacknowledged by the CEO or remained inconclusive over the past few years.
Published Sep 18, 2025 | 6:09 PM ⚊ Updated Sep 18, 2025 | 6:09 PM
Representational image. Credit: (ECISVEEP/ X)
Synopsis: Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of over one lakh fraudulent voters in Mahadevapura highlight persistent issues in Bengaluru’s electoral rolls since 2012. Duplicate IDs, deleted voters, and unaddressed complaints from activists and RWAs plague the system. Despite petitions and court filings, the Election Commission’s inaction leaves voter list anomalies unresolved, undermining democratic processes.
It has been over a month since Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that more than one lakh voters were wrongfully added to the electoral rolls to aid BJP in Mahadevapura Assembly segment during the 2024 elections.
The allegations put the Election Commission under a direct scanner. However, duplicate names, deletion of existing voters and incomplete information — voter lists in Bengaluru have been plagued with these anomalies since as far back as 2012.
Concerned citizens, activists, Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and non-profit institutions have been filing complaints, petitions and even sending e-mails to the State Election Commission, Central Election Commission and Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka, to bring such issues to their notice. Many of them weren’t addressed.
“This (voter irregularities) is not something new. I have been complaining regarding anomalies in the voter list since 2012. Many others have filed complaints too. But our concerns have fallen on deaf ears,” said PG Bhat, a retired Naval officer, who is also an electoral rolls analyst. He has been analysing electoral rolls during most elections and publishes the findings on his blog, while also alerting necessary officials via different means including emails and in-person meetings.
South First looks back at some complaints that went unacknowledged by the CEO or remained inconclusive over the past few years.
Ideal Democratic Empowerment Association (IDEA), a non-profit organisation presented complaints before the CEO and SEC in 2024, pointing out duplicate voter IDs, ‘fake’ voter IDs, and failure to remove dead voters from the draft voters list in Jigani area in Bengaluru.
“The voters are given voting rights in the wards totally unknown to them. There are many double voters who are having multiple Voter Identity cards not only in their current residing place but also in their native places and working places,” the complaint stated.
The organisation also urged election officers to conduct door-to-door physical verification as that is the only “fool-proof” method. They also submitted that if needed, they would be ready to cooperate and coordinate with election officers for the aforementioned purposes in Jigani Purasabha limits.
They also listed examples for their claims, by mentioning the voter ids that were inaccurate.
Details from IDEA’s complaint
While the SEO issued a representation in response to their complaints, urging CEO to act in the matter, no changes were found when revision of the draft electoral rolls were complete and final electoral roll was published in January 2025. Hence, the organisation filed a writ petition in the court early this year, mentioning these concerns.
“To the utter shock and surprise of the petitioner, no changes or corrections were made to the Draft Electoral Roll and the Door to Door verification of the concerned Booth Level Officer was just a mockery of our democratic processes. Till this day, petitioner is able to see dead persons enrolled as voters, duplicate voter IDs/I-cards, and the voters are shuffled intentionally with other wards to make sure that they don’t vote for the problems they are facing in their own wards,” the petition stated.
However, the court dismissed the petition on the grounds that, “The petitioner has remedy to ventilate its grievance by pointing out the loopholes, if any, in the electoral rolls when the future revision of electoral roll takes place. As stated above, preparation of a list of voters is a continuous process to be undertaken by the election commission. The prayers in this petition cannot be granted.”
Advocate Vishwanath, who was also part of the organisation, told South First that they felt “demotivated” after the court order.
“We presented all facts and cases where these irregularities were actually reported. But no action was taken. It has remained inconclusive for us,” he said.
While the aforementioned complaint was the most recent, Bhat told South First that he has sent over a thousand emails to concerned officials over the last few years to report voter anomalies.
When the EC published revised electoral rolls on 11 January, 2016, Bhat raised concerns about the disqualification of 2,007 voters of Bengaluru, in an email to the CEO-KA on 5 February, 2016.
More specifically, after analysing the electoral rolls, Bhat found that 409 voters, forming 26.22 percent of the voter list for part 305 of Mahadevapura Assembly Constituency were disqualified from being voters. He found it alarming that such a large number of voters were disqualified from exercising their franchise in just a single booth.
He wrote in his blog, “Strangely, a large number of voters were disqualified from eight other parts of Mahadevapura constituency as well.” However, Bhat did not receive a response to his email.
On 24 February, 2018, Bhat sent another email to the CEO-KA showing with numbers and bar charts that certain constituencies, including Mahadevapura, indicate very high addition of voters. As per ECI guidelines, if the additions are higher than four percent or the deletions are more than two percent in an area, the matter should be investigated.
“There are many cases where husband and wife, living in the same house, are shown in different parts. When a person does not find his/her name in the part where the name of the spouse is not found, it is natural to assume that the name is missing. This leads to disenfranchisement and an attempt to re-register and create a duplicate voter record,” Bhat said in his email. Two such examples reported to CEO-KA by email on this day were not addressed.
In reference to the electoral rolls published on 18, November 2020, Bhat sent the lists of suspected duplicate voter records to the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) of Bengaluru with a copy to the CEO. Those duplicate records persisted in the electoral rolls and new ones were added during the summary revision of the electoral rolls in January 2021, Bhat alleged.
PG Bhat shows examples of duplicate voters
He demonstrated cases where one voter is added in two parts with the same EPIC number. Except the address (section and house number), the records are identical. He also found 21 cases where new records were added with such identical data as existed in the draft rolls published on 18 November, 2020.
Voter added in two parts with same EPIC number
Complaints regarding additions, arbitrary deletions and duplicate voters in the voter lists are required to be made as ‘declarations’ before the Election Commission, according to officials.
“Once a declaration is signed, and necessary documents are submitted to prove the allegations, the complaints will be assessed by the BLOs to see if there is any merit in them,” Joint CEO (Electoral Roll) Yogeshwara S told South First.
These declarations are usually in the form of Form 7 (objection for proposed inclusion of name of other person/seeking deletion of own name/seeking deletion of any other person’s name due to death/shifting) and Form 8 (seeking correction to particulars entered in electoral roll).
Even if the allegations regarding voter anomalies are sent over email, Yogeshwara said they would be taken up by the BLOs if it is supplemented by evidence-related documents.
(Edited by Amit Vasudev)
