11 foreigners under lens for having Karnataka EPIC

BENGALURU: The Foreigners Registration Office (FRO) has contacted the office of the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), seeking details of 11 foreign nationals who were discovered to possess Karnataka voter identity cards and voting rights.

In practice, a source in the CEO office remarked, "These 11 foreigners were caught in Tamil Nadu and have criminal cases against them. They were remarked to be from Sri Lanka, but we do not have all details. Since the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is ongoing in Karnataka, we have been contacted to verify their voting details. We are checking if they are fake or genuine, and if ever they were applied. We are additionally verifying the details of other voters, particularly in cases where anomalies and no-mapping information has been shared."

Furthermore, authorities from other states, including Goa, Andaman and Odisha, have additionally approached the CEO Karnataka office seeking details and verification of electors who are noted to have included information of Karnataka in their SIR forms.

According to The source, in some cases, while seeking information of electors in anomaly verification, passports are additionally being sought. This document is then being shared with the passport authorities, and in some cases, they will additionally be shared with the ministries concerned for authentication and verification.

All documents shared under the no-mapping category will be doubly verified by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and the District Election Officer (DEO) to establish citizenship, the source remarked, adding that once the SIR exercise is completed in Karnataka, the data will be scanned for similar entries to further clean the electoral rolls.

For now, 11 foreigners under lens for having Karnataka EPIC remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.