Five-hour sit-in forces the poll body's hand: ECI orders probe into Karnataka's bulk Form-7 deletions

BENGALURU — It took a chief minister sitting on the road outside an election office to make the Election Commission move. After a five-hour sit-in by Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar and his cabinet colleagues on Thursday, the state's Chief Electoral Officer V. Anbu Kumar ordered an inquiry into the bulk filing of Form-7 applications seeking deletion of names from the electoral rolls, and directed election officials to act against applicants who "knowingly" make false statements in electoral forms. Shivakumar had put a cabinet meeting on hold for the demonstration, held after a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with the CEO failed to satisfy him. He was joined by cabinet ministers, Congress MLAs and state party president B.K. Hariprasad. He ended the protest only after the inquiry was announced. The chief minister's charge is grave: that "pre-filled" Form-7 applications were filed en masse across Karnataka by workers of the opposition BJP and the Janata Dal (Secular), targeting voters from Muslim, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Class communities on grounds such as "shifted residence" or "absent". He claimed some four and a half million eligible voters could be at risk, that many forms were fake or forged, and that bulk filings clustered on September 22, 23 and 24 — the tail end of the claims-and-objections window during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of the rolls. In his memorandum he demanded a constituency-wise and booth-wise examination: who filed unusually large numbers of applications, what their relationship was to the voters named, and where the pre-printed voter and EPIC details came from. There is already evidence the machinery noticed. In Belagavi and Vijayapura, BJP workers who had filed Form-7s in bulk withdrew them after being warned that false claims attract punitive action — submitting written declarations that the filings had been "mistakes". On October 1, Karnataka Police registered five FIRs over the mass filings under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, since complaints under the Representation of the People Act can be initiated only by authorised Election Commission officials. Shivakumar has demanded the Commission take suo motu action and file a criminal complaint itself. The BJP is pushing back hard. Former chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa submitted a memorandum to the Director General and Inspector General of Police demanding that FIRs stop being filed against BJP leaders and workers over Form-7 applications, and that those already registered be reviewed — alleging the police machinery was being subjected to political pressure. State BJP chief B.Y. Vijayendra rejected the conspiracy charge outright, calling the filings routine verification. This escalation follows reporting on what has been called "Operation Form-7": pre-printed deletion forms surfacing from a party office in Kodagu and Madikeri, men claiming a municipal corporation brought pre-printed Muslim-deletion forms to six booths in Belagavi North, 3,244 forms filed in three days in Bhalki with forged signatures (Crime 162/2026), a Mysuru voter finding his own name objected to (Crime 220/2026), and a Belagavi BJP leader booked for forgery over 198 Muslim voters. Election officials insist no deletion is automatic and final rolls are due late in October. The test of the probe is not whether forms get rejected — officials already promise that. It is whether the Commission names the networks behind the printers, the booths and the bulk filers, or settles for rejecting paperwork while the operation behind it survives for the next revision.