Karnataka election: Congress asks EC to disqualify BJP's Sriramulu; updates

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress' high-voltage campaign for the Karnataka Assembly election 2018 has ended, and the voting is scheduled to start in less than a day. The campaigning in the run-up to the crucial polls saw everything from a cross-fire of barbs to a fake voter ID haul. On the last day, Congress President Rahul Gandhi slammed the Modi government for issues ranging from atrocities against Dalits to the country's foreign policy as he expressed confidence in winning the Karnataka polls "hands down". BJP President Amit Shah, meanwhile, accused the Congress of making desperate attempts to win the election in an "undemocratic" way, adding that such machinations would not work and that his party would win 130-plus seats. Meanwhile, the Karnataka Police said that the election authorities were satisfied with the law-and-order situation in the state ahead of the polls.

The Congress' candidate from Bengaluru's Raja Rajeshwari Nagar Assembly segment has been booked in connection with the recovery of close to 10,000 voter ID cards from a flat there, along with over 100,000 counterfoils resembling acknowledgement slips used for addition of names into electoral rolls. Further, the Election Commission (EC) on Thursday night deferred a decision on the recovery of voter ID cards from the Raja Rajeshwari Nagar flat, even as it sought fresh information from the state election machinery.