BBMP blacklists Chilume from tenders, surveys and campaigns

BENGALURU: Days after the alleged voter data theft by Chilume Trust came to the fore, the Bruthat Bengaluru Mahnagara Palike (BBMP) on Wednesday blacklisted it.

The Trust will now be barred from any tender process, survey or campaigns. The civic body was in the process of commissioning a survey through the trust to identify genuine street vendors, issue them identity and Aadhaar cards.

Chilume Trust founder Ravikumar was arrested recently.

Meanwhile, Central Election Commission deputy commissioner and other officials will visit the offices of the Returning Officers (ROs) on Thursday. This follows complaints against Chilume Trust by the state BJP, Congress and BBMP. The CEC has already sought a report from the State Election Commissioner regarding the alleged voter data theft.

The BBMP has already suspended two ROs and the police have also issued notices to all the ROs to present themselves for questioning in batches of five every day.

The BBMP has also started issuing ID cards to booth-level officers (BLOs) itself and plans to distribute about 8,500 identity cards. A fresh revision of voter rolls is expected to be taken up next week.

So far, the police have arrested six people in connection with the case, including Chilume founder Ravikumar. They have sent seized mobile phones, hard disks, laptops, tabs, for decoding to the technical cell of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).