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The people’s newsroom

PoliticsSIR

Karnataka High Court stays probe against BJP's Ravi Patil in Belagavi voter deletion case

Patil and two supporters are accused of trying to strike 198 Muslim voters off the rolls during the SIR. The court cited an earlier order in similar cases and will hear the matter on 29 October.

From the editorial desk · BengaluruPublished
Karnataka High Court, Bengaluru
Karnataka High Court, BengaluruPhoto: Moheen Reeyad / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Key points

  1. The High Court stayed the police investigation against Ravi Patil and two supporters until the next hearing.
  2. The FIR alleges a bid to delete the names of 198 Muslim voters in Belagavi North during the SIR.
  3. The case returns to court on 29 October.

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday stayed the police investigation against BJP leader Ravi Patil and two of his supporters, who are accused of trying to have the names of 198 Muslim voters struck off the electoral rolls in Belagavi during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

Justice Venkatesh Naik T said the facts were close to those in cases where another bench of the court had already stopped investigations. “The perusal of the aforesaid order and the facts and circumstances involved in the present case are similar,” he noted, and stayed the probe until the next hearing on 29 October as a matter of judicial discipline. The state is free to ask for the order to be changed or lifted.

The allegation

The FIR, registered at Belagavi Market police station on a complaint by booth level agent Meerasab Sanadi, accuses Patil, the two supporters and 20 to 25 others of conspiring to target Muslim voters in the Belagavi North constituency. They are alleged to have filed Form 7 applications, used to seek the deletion of names from the roll, against 198 voters, backed by documents falsely presented as issued by the electoral registration officer.

Sanadi alleges that the applications included his own name and those of his family.

Patil, a doctor who runs a hospital in Belagavi, has denied wrongdoing. “I have committed no wrong,” he said after a local court granted him conditional interim bail earlier this month. “I have not asked for the deletion of the votes of a particular community.” He has called the allegations “false and concocted” and says he only asked officials to check voters he considered suspicious.

A wider row

Belagavi is one of several Karnataka districts where police have registered FIRs over mass Form 7 applications during the SIR, with similar complaints in Bidar, Mysuru and Ballari. On 8 October another bench of the High Court barred coercive action against Patil and his supporters, and on 9 October a coordinate bench stayed investigations in similar cases. Senior advocate M Aruna Shyam, for the petitioners, relied on that order on Tuesday.