Bengaluru, Oct 9 The Karnataka High Court has granted an interim stay on an FIR registered against two persons accused of submitting 778 Form 7 applications during the SIR of electoral rolls, while questioning the state prosecution on the legal basis for treating the submission of more than 50 such applications as an offence.
A single-judge bench of Justice Anant Ramanath Hegde on Friday heard petitions filed by G S Vasanthalakshmi and R Deepak Singh of Guttahalli, seeking quashing of the FIR registered against them for allegedly submitting applications containing false information.
Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocate M Arun Shyam submitted that they were Booth Level Agents (BLAs) who had sought the deletion of ineligible names from the electoral rolls.
He argued that election officials alone were authorised to examine the applications and decide on them.
Opposing the petitions, Additional Public Prosecutor Anoop Kumar said an individual could submit a maximum of 50 applications and alleged that the petitioners had attempted to deliberately get voters' names deleted from the rolls.
The bench questioned whether election officials would not verify the applications and examine any false information before deciding on them. It also asked whether the voters concerned would be served notices before their names were deleted.
