New Delhi: After receiving a memorandum from at least eight residents on Saturday (October 3) alleging that forged death certificates were used to remove their names from electoral rolls during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Karnataka’s Bijapur district, Deputy Commissioner and District Election Officer (DEO) K. Anand has directed an inquiry.Allama Bagwan, a government school teacher, was among the eight individuals. She learnt that a third-party objection had been filed under Form 7 claiming she was no longer alive using doctored documents. The Booth Level Officer (BLO) told her about the application.“The BLO is a fellow government school teacher. He visited my house and collected details from me. He assured me that my name would not be deleted from the rolls. But I was shocked to find out that someone had managed to procure a death certificate saying I was dead,” she told officials.Abdul Razak Bagwan, Malanbi Jamadar, Mumtaj Mulla and four others were also shocked to know that Form 7 applications along with fake death certificates were submitted to get their names removed from the rolls.Congress leader Abdul Hameed Mushrif alleged that an attempt was made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to knock off roughly 1,046 voters from the minority community across 198 polling stations in the Bijapur city constituency by wrongly declaring them dead.The discrepancy first came to light when Congress workers visited homes to check whether the existing rolls matched the ongoing SIR exercise.According to them, followers of expelled BJP MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, had objected to these voters’ inclusion by attaching fake death certificates of at least eight people to Form 7 applications seeking their removal.Also read: Karnataka CEO Orders Probe Into Bulk Form-7 Deletions After CM Shivakumar’s Protest“They also found out that the certificates were issued by competent authorities, but lacked details. In several cases, the names of parents or spouses did not match with those of the victims. This is a clear case of Yatnal and other Hindutva leaders trying to target Muslim voters. We demand a comprehensive investigation and legal action against those responsible for this,” Mushrif told reporters on Sunday (October 4).He said the documents stating that certain voters had died were submitted on Yatnal’s letterhead.“We were always suspicious of him, as he was always saying Muslims were involved in bogus voting. However, local verification by Congress Booth Level Agents (BLAs) revealed that these voters were alive. We also seek an inquiry into these fake certificates. Who issued those certificates without any inquiry and on whose request?” Mushrif asked.Meanwhile, fact checker and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair reported on X that BJP taluk leaders H.K. Dinesh, Arjun, Halappa, Karthik and Brijesh have filed an objection under Form 7 on September 21 and 22, seeking the removal of the names of 243 voters, including BLO Wazir Khan and his family from various booths in Koppa taluk in Chikkamagaluru from the draft list. Interestingly, a majority of the 243 names flagged were of Muslims and a few Christians.“This shows the targeted campaign against Minorities by the BJP,” Zubair wrote.Interestingly, Dinesh submitted a confession letter on October 1 withdrawing the objections, following the outrage over the targeted deletion of Muslim voters.“The letter says, he is withdrawing the Form 7 objections submitted earlier. Do we need any further proof of vote theft?” Zubair asked.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.