Discovery of counterfeit Electoral Papers in Karnataka sparks arguments between BJP, Congress

Three days prior to the Karnataka Elections, the Election Commission of Karnataka gave an official statement confirming the recovery of 9,746 forged electors photo identity cards from an apartment in Bangalore. This revelation instantly wreaked havoc among the two major political parties – the BJP and the Congress.

Upon the discovery of the fake voter ID cards, the BJP demanded the Karnataka Elections in the affected constituency to be immediately countermanded. Union Minister Prakash Javadekar did not hesitate to blame the Congress for attempting to rig the elections by creating these fake ID cards, whose intended use could have been beneficial to the party. The Congress’ retaliation to this accusation was brought to notice the fact that the flat where the forged documents had been retrieved was owned by Manjula Nanjamuri – an ex-BJP member. INC spokesperson in-charge Randeep Surjewala accused the BJP of acting on a drama made up by their own ex-leader, and explained that Nanjamuri had rented the apartment to her son, Rakesh, who had contested the previous BBMP elections of 2015 on a BJP ticket.

The Congress leader went as far as to claim that the flat had not been raided by the Election Commissioners, but instead by hired BJP workers in order to fake the drama. The BJP, however, denied all of these claims nonchalantly, claiming that Manjula had left BJP for Congress 6 years ago. BJP also stated that at this point, Congress was just blaming BJP for the sake of blaming them, without any physical evidence.

After the situation escalated to a point where the official Twitter account of Karnataka BJP tweeted that witnessing the Congress use anti-democratic means to rig the elections was not something new, and had been in effect since Indira Gandhi’s rule, the Janata Dal Party was compelled to step in. The JD Secretary General Danish Ali stated that the Electoral Commission should be the only person dealing with this matter, while the BJP and Congress needed to lay off. Ali elaborated that both the parties were using unethical methods, which needed to be stopped so that the Karnataka Elections could proceed peacefully.