Overview

• BJP Rajya Sabha MP Lahar Singh Siroya petitioned the Election Commission on August 12 to probe former Union minister C.M. Ibrahim’s claim of purchasing 3,000 votes in the 2018 Badami assembly race.
• Ibrahim said he took a loan to buy the votes and that Siddaramaiah paid for them six months later, an allegation Siddaramaiah has rejected, insisting he was unaware of ground-level dealings.
• Siddaramaiah’s 2018 victory margin in Badami was just 1,696 votes, while NOTA ballots numbered 2,007, figures cited by Siroya to highlight the claim’s plausibility.
• In his letter, Siroya urged the ECI to demand Ibrahim reveal how and from whom the votes were obtained and to treat the allegations as “gross electoral corruption.”
• The BJP’s move flips Congress’s own recent vote-fraud accusations and raises questions about the Election Commission’s handling of high-profile electoral integrity complaints.