New Delhi: After the initial X post in which the Election Commission (EC) labelled Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of “vote theft” in Karnataka’s Aland as “incorrect and baseless”, the Karnataka chief electoral officer (CEO) released a note that curiously confirms the Congress leader’s accusations.The EC’s post on X had already said that there were “certain unsuccessful attempts” made for the deletion of electors in Aland in “2023” but refrained from sharing details of the matter.On Thursday (September 18) evening, the Karnataka CEO’s detailed but unsigned note confirmed Gandhi’s allegations that there were indeed 6,018 Form 7 (used to delete electors) applications received by the EC through “NVSP, VHA, Garuda apps during December 2022”.Aland Case 2023@ECISVEEP pic.twitter.com/Z35F0PlWPW— Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka (@ceo_karnataka) September 18, 2025However, the CEO went on to say that since this was an unusually high number of Form 7 applications, the EC “suspected” their genuineness and initiated a probe.“Accordingly, 24 applications were accepted and 5,994 incorrect applications were rejected and not deleted,” the CEO said.The CEO’s note also confirmed another of Gandhi’s allegations, that the “attempt at such deletions” were caught by a booth-level officer who knew someone who was deleted from the rolls.The note said that “based on the inquiry findings by the BLOs”, the EC lodged an FIR with the Inspector of Police, Aland Police Station, Kalaburagi district”, again confirming Gandhi’s claim that the matter is under probe.The CEO further said that it has handed over “all the available information” with the EC to Kalaburagi’s police superintendent on the matter, but does not explicitly clarify that the information contains what the Karnataka crime investigation department (CID) has been consistently asking for over the last 18 months.This is the destination IP addresses, device destination ports and OTP trails used along with the fake mobile numbers through which a possible mastermind or a “call centre” (as claimed by Gandhi) behind the allegedly centralised attempt at vote theft may be tracked.While the CEO said the EC has provided IP addresses to the police, it is unclear if they include the aforementioned details.Documents seen by The Wire suggest that while the Karnataka police received IP logs from the poll body, these were as of January this year found to not contain details of either destination IP addresses or of destination ports.The CEO’s note does not clarify whether or not the EC has such information. However, the note added that the CEO met the investigating officer and cybersecurity experts among the police to “review progress of the investigation”, and claimed that he “has been providing any other assistance/information/documents to the investigating agency”.The note indicates that the CEO is following the case with the Kalaburagi police. It didn’t mention the requests made by the Karnataka CID to the EC.