The Congress government in Karnataka on Thursday recommended the State Election Commission use ballot paper for local body elections, citing the “erosion of confidence” in electronic voting machines, The Hindu reported.

This came amid allegations by the Congress about widespread electoral fraud in the country.

“There has been an erosion of credibility and confidence in EVMs in elections,” the newspaper quoted state Law Minister HK Patil as telling reporters after a Cabinet meeting.

Patil added that all elections for local bodies would have ballot papers instead of EVMs, The Indian Express reported. Laws will be amended to make the change possible, he added.

The reason for the Cabinet decision was that several complaints had been raised recently about flaws in the electoral rolls and the inclusion of many voters not residing in an area in Bengaluru, he added.

The recommendation came nearly a month after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that his party had spent six months examining the electoral rolls in Mahadevapura Assembly segment of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency and found discrepancies in more than one lakh names.

Gandhi alleged that this was evidence of the Election Commission having colluded with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

He claimed that the electoral rolls included 11,965 duplicate entries, 40,009 voters with fake or invalid addresses, 10,454 “bulk voters” registered in a single address, 4,132 voters with invalid photographs and 33,692 voters in whose cases there had allegedly been misuse of Form 6.

The Election Commission’s Form 6 is an application document for registering new voters.

On Thursday, the Cabinet also recommended the preparation and revision of voter lists for local bodies, including zilla, taluk and gram panchayats, municipal corporations, city municipal councils, town municipal councils and town panchayats, rather than relying on the electoral rolls prepared for the Assembly elections, The Indian Express reported.

This came amid a delay in elections to the taluk and zilla panchayats in the state, and creation of five city corporations under the Greater Bengaluru Authority, The Hindu reported.

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