Major twist in Karnataka Assembly Elections

Bengaluru, May 11: A major twist has erupted in Karnataka Assembly elections, which will be scheduled to begin in the span of hours.

The Election Commission of India has announced on Friday that the polling for RR Nagar(Raja Rajeshwari Nagar) constituency in Bengaluru will be postponed to May 28.

The counting of votes for the seat will be done on May 31.

The development comes after the BJP and JD(S) had called for countermanding of polls in the constituency over seizure of large trove of voter ID cards.

Jalahalli Police had earlier named Munirathna Naidu, sitting Congress MLA as one of 14 persons accused in the case, two days after 9,746 voter IDs were discovered from an apartment in Jalahalli.

The seizure of the voter cards were announced by Karnataka's Chief Electoral Officer Sanjiv Kumar late-night on Tuesday.

Addressing reporters on Wednesday, Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer Sanjiv Kumar had said that prima facie this was an attempt of 'cash for votes'.

"The ID cards belonged to people living in slums. The cards of members of each slum were stacked together with the name of one person on each stack along with their phone numbers of the said people. We suspect that they had taken the voter IDs after giving cash," he had said.

Kumar also revealed that several survey forms were found along with PAN cards, driving licenses, phone numbers and details of pension plans. A total of 9,746 voter IDs were discovered.