Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)

Bengaluru, Aug 30: Eight MLCs are found to have provided wrong information to the Election Commission for the specific purpose of enrolling themselves as voters from the city, to be able to cast their votes during the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) mayoral election.

The MLCs found guilty of furnishing false information are R B Thimmapur, Allam Veerabhadrappa, Raghu Achar, N S Bosaraju, and S Ravi of the Congress, as well as C R Manohar and Appaji Gowda of the JD(S). An independent, M D Lakshminarayana, too has been found guilty of wrongly getting himself enrolled as a voter here.

Election Commission had directed BBMP to investigate the matter on the basis of complaint filed by BBMP opposition leader, Padmanabha Reddy. BBMP commissioner, N Manjunath Prasad, completed the inquiry and submitted a report to chief election commissioner on Tuesday. Anomalies have been found in addresses furnished to the legislative council. If they are considered as residents of BBMP, the MLCs are not eligible for travel allowance from their native constituencies to attend assembly sessions. But all of them have claimed these allowances, it has been observed.

For this offence, the concerned can be jailed for a term up to one year. During the inquiry, it was found that names of leaders were added to electoral rolls very next day in several cases although the forms they furnished did not have complete details.