The Congress has accused the BJP candidate for an Assembly bypoll in the city of bribing and illegally collecting the voter identity cards of many electors to ensure they don’t vote against him.

The Congress got a court order on Thursday directing Bangalore police to file a case against RR Nagar BJP candidate N. Munirathna and his associates who allegedly collected thousands of voter ID cards in exchange for Rs 5,000 to each voter.

RR Nagar has a sizeable population of Muslims and the poor. “By denying the poor and the minorities the right to vote, the BJP is also trying to create a rift and take undue electoral advantage from that,” Congress spokesman and senior lawyer V.S. Ugrappa told The Telegraph on Saturday.

“We want action against Munirathna and all those who are involved in this crime. If the Election Commission does not act, we will file a contempt petition since there is a court order to proceed with a police case,” he added.

“In the same complaint (on Tuesday), we have addressed the serious issue of Munirathna overshooting the electoral expenses (originally Rs 30 lakh). He would have paid at least Rs 2 crore for the thousands of voter cards collected,” Ugrappa said.

The court order cited offences under IPC Sections 171 B, C, E and F that cover bribery and interference in elections, and Sections 25, 77 and 125 of the Representation of the Peoples Act, which pertains to charges ranging from overspending to promoting enmity between classes.

The police booked an FIR against the BJP candidate on Friday. “We are still waiting to see what kind of action the police and the Election Commission take on this electoral fraud,” Ugrappa said.

Bypolls to the RR Nagar Assembly seat in Bangalore became necessary after Munirathna defected to the BJP last year along with 12 other party colleagues and three from the Janata Dal Secular. The defections led to the fall of the Congress-JDS government and the BJP came to power.

This is not the first time Munirathna is being accused of voter ID fraud. As a Congress candidate in the 2018 Karnataka polls, he had been booked along with 13 of his party associates after the Election Commission seized 9,746 genuine voter ID cards from two steel trunks in an apartment belonging to one of his supporters.

They had allegedly collected the cards to ensure that JDS supporters did not get to vote against Munirathna. He eventually won by over 41,000 votes, after polling had been deferred by a few days owing to the fiasco.

Although the Congress had not taken any steps against Munirathna then, many in the party had internally expressed disgust at his actions.

In their written complaint to the chief election commissioner, Congress leaders, including Ugrappa, have cited the 2018 instance. “We have listed the names of several voters whose cards were forcibly taken away by Munirathna’s people. We expect swift action against him and all those responsible for the gross violation of law,” Ugrappa said.

The BJP denied any wrongdoing. “These are false accusations. We have done no wrong. They just want to keep this issue alive until the election,” state BJP legal cell co-convener Yogendra Hodaghattha told this newspaper.

The BJP has filed a counter-complaint with the Election Commission and lodged an FIR bringing allegations of bribery and voter card confiscation against Congress Legislative Council member M. Narayanaswamy, who has been campaigning for the Congress candidate for RR Nagar, and others.

“They are the ones who are grabbing voter cards from the people, not us,” insisted Hodaghattha.

The first elections after being appointed state Congress chief, D.K. Shivakumar has taken the bypolls to RR Nagar and Sira in Tumkur district as a prestige issue. He has fielded Kusuma Ravi, the widow of IAS officer D.K. Ravi who committed suicide a few years ago, against Munirathna, apparently with the aim of bagging sympathy votes.

Former minister T.B. Jayachandra is the Congress candidate in Sira.