Private company in Bengaluru found selling bulk voter data to candidates in Karnataka Assembly polls
Cyber Crime Branch officials file FIR against company
New Delhi: At the threshold of the Assembly elections in the state, a private firm in Bengaluru has been found selling voter data in bulk.
While the owners are yet to be traced, the company has been found advertising on its website openly that it has ‘sensitive information’ related to voters, including their mobile phone numbers and WhatsApp numbers, reports The News Minute.
The potential clients are given login access by the company and can purchase the voters’ information and other services from the website, for as low a price as Rs 25,000.
Investigation on the domain details of the website revealed that it was registered in Delhi in April this year, but all other details on the website had been redacted by the company.
The Election Commission has been investigating if the company could have been used to bribe the voters to provide such information, by crediting funds into the voters’ accounts through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
The matter of the data sale by the company came to light when Raju, an independent candidate, informed the EC after he was called on phone and offered voter data for a price. Raju spoke to Srinivas, the officer in-charge of enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct, about the matter. The officer, in turn, roped in the police, who registered a complaint on April 24.
An FIR has also been registered by the Cyber Crime Branch (Southeast Division) officers in Bengaluru against the private company in this regard.
On logging in to the website of the private company, it was found that the dashboard declared that the website contained data of up to 6.5 lakh voters, including 3.45 lakh male, 2.93 lakh female and 5,600 other voters. It is yet to be confirmed about the total data that the company has and if the data pertains to specific constituencies, says The News Minute.
Sources in the EC have expressed concern that the format of the data being sold is similar to what is stored on Eronet, the government portal with the EC data on voters and which only election officials can access.
This is the second voter scam discovered in Karnataka in the last six months. In November 2022, ‘Chilume’, a private company, was found to have collected personal data from lakhs of Bengaluru voters. The company staff had posted it as officials of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Paliker (BBMP).
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Rupee falls 9 paise to all-time low of 90.58 against US dollar in early trade
Mumbai (PTI): Rupee depreciated 9 paise to an all-time low of 90.58 against US dollar in early trade on Monday, weighed down by uncertainty over an India-US trade deal and persistent foreign fund outflows.
Forex traders said rupee is trading with a negative bias as investors are in wait and watch mode and awaiting cues from the India-US trade deal front.
At the interbank foreign exchange market, the rupee opened at 90.53 against the US dollar, then fell further to an all-time intraday low of 90.58 against the greenback, registering a fall of 9 paise over its previous close.
On Friday, the rupee had slipped 17 paise to close at an all-time low of 90.49 against the American currency.
Meanwhile, the dollar index, which gauges the greenback's strength against a basket of six currencies, was trading 0.05 per cent lower at 98.35.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading higher by 0.52 per cent at USD 61.44 per barrel in futures trade.
On the domestic equity market front, the 30-share benchmark index Sensex was trading 298.86 points lower at 84,968.80, while the Nifty was down 121.40 points at 25,925.55.
Foreign Institutional Investors sold equities worth Rs 1,114.22 crore on Friday, according to exchange data.
"FPIs continue to be in selling mode in equity and debt while RBI has been selling dollars to fund their long positions," said Anil Kumar Bhansali, Head of Treasury and Executive Director Finrex Treasury Advisors LLP.
