Bengaluru: The Congress party has decided to stage a huge protest against the Election Commission on Aug 4th or Aug 5th, alleging large scale electoral list manipulation by the EC during 2024 in the name of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls.
The Congress party claims that the Election Commission had helped the BJP win the Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituency by including over 70,000 new voters and deleting a large number of voters before the elections.
The Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) has confirmed that AICC President Mallikarjun Kharge and LOP Rahul Gandhi would be attending the protest rally and the date of protest will be either on August 4th or 5th, depending on convenience of both the leaders. Though the Congress party wanted to take a massive rally on the Seshadri road from Sangolli Rayanna circle in Majestic area to the Election Commission office on Palace road, the idea has been shelved due to a recent court order, banning all the rally processions in the Central Bengaluru District. Home Minister Dr G Parameshwar said that the modalities of the rally would be decided in a day or two.
The Congress party is mainly targeting two Assembly constituencies in the Bengaluru Central Lok Sabha constituencies. Interestingly, among the Assembly constituencies coming under the Bengaluru Central Parliamentary seat, only two Assembly constituencies are being represented by the BJP. Rest of the Assembly seats were won by the Congress during the 2023 Assembly elections. In Lok Sabha elections, P C Mohan of BJP polled 6,58,915 votes, while Mansoor Ali Khan of Congress polled 6,26,208, conceding defeat with a margin of 32,707.
The constituency profile also indicates strong minority voter presence. When the counting began, Congress candidate Mansoo Ali Khan was leading by a margin of over 50000 votes till the last round. However, when the counting of Mahadevapura and C V Raman Nagar started, BJP polled over 90% of the polled votes and zipped past the Congress candidate, winning by over 32,000 votes margin.
The Congress had entrusted the review of election results to a private agency, for finding out the reasons for Congress defeat in more than eight constituencies, where it was hoping to win. The private agency has given a report stating that over 70,000 voters from outside the State had been newly included during 2024 elections and more than 30,000 traditional voters had been left out of the list. The agency has gone one step ahead and claimed that the 70000 new voters were from Maharashtra, mostly from Sangli district and after the elections in Karnataka, they had gone back to Sangli and voted there also.
The Congress is preparing a detailed graphic video of the entire episode, which would be handed over to the party high command. Rahul Gandhi is expected to release that video to the media during this Parliament Session itself.
The other constituency the Congress has doubts about is Bengaluru Rural District Constituency, where former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda's son-in-law Dr C N Manjunath defeated D K Suresh, brother of Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar.
Though the Congress has similar doubts in two Assembly constituencies coming under the Bengaluru Rural Lok Sabha constituency, the margin of defeat is over 3.2 lakh votes.
However, the Congress feels that a large number of bogus voters from Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh had come down to vote in both Rajarajeshwari Nagar and Yeshwanthpur Assembly constituencies.
