Fraudsters are exploiting the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Karnataka to target voters with unauthorised apps, fake websites and impersonation calls designed to extract banking credentials. The pattern has emerged after the Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead and Others list, known as the ASDDO list, was made public, prompting a spike in third-party platforms claiming to offer voters a shortcut to check their status.
The Special Intensive Revision now underway across Karnataka has already flagged more than 1.11 crore of the state’s 5.54 crore registered voters under the ASDDO category, a scale that has created exactly the kind of anxiety and urgency fraudsters typically look to exploit. With the process still active and deadlines for correction under constant revision, voters checking their status online have become an easy target for platforms designed to look official but are not.
Fake Portals Mimic an Official Process
Several unauthorised websites and mobile applications have surfaced claiming to let citizens check whether their names appear on the ASDDO list, and some go further, claiming to flag whether a person’s enumeration form carries a so-called logical discrepancy. In certain instances, these platforms have shown voters as being under the ASDDO category even when their names do not appear on the lists published by the Chief Electoral Officer.
The Chief Electoral Officer’s office has responded by directing citizens to verify their status only through the official CEO website, warning that unofficial platforms cannot be relied upon for accuracy. That warning carries added weight given that ASDDO placement itself does not amount to deletion from the rolls, it merely flags a record for verification, meaning a fraudulent app could easily manufacture alarm where none is warranted.
Separately, voters have reported receiving calls claiming a mismatch between details on their voter identity card and their SIR enumeration form, with some callers alleging the form has been rejected outright. The caller, posing as an Election Commission official, follows up with a WhatsApp message containing a link that leads to an online form requesting personal and identification details.
A ₹5 Payment Request That Escalates Quickly
The scheme’s most dangerous feature is its use of a nominal payment demand, typically pegged at just ₹5, ostensibly to resolve the flagged discrepancy. Victims are directed to a payment page that, instead of processing a small transaction, requests net banking credentials, card numbers, CVV details and eventually the ATM PIN, information no legitimate government verification process would ever need.
This graduated approach, beginning with a trivial sum before escalating to sensitive credentials, mirrors social engineering tactics documented across other digital fraud waves in India, where a low-stakes first step is used to lower a victim’s guard before extracting higher-value information. The involvement of an official-sounding pretext, in this case a government electoral exercise, adds a layer of legitimacy that purely commercial scams often lack.
Officials investigating the pattern have stressed that no genuine SIR-related communication would ever ask for banking passwords, OTPs or PINs. The Chief Electoral Officer’s office has said the authenticity of any call can only be confirmed if it originated from the CEO’s own office, and has urged citizens receiving suspicious calls to approach the police rather than respond to the caller directly.
Electoral Anxiety as a Fraud Vector
The Karnataka episode fits a broader pattern in which large-scale, time-bound government exercises, whether tax filing deadlines, KYC updates or, in this case, electoral roll revisions, become fertile ground for impersonation fraud precisely because citizens expect official communication during these windows. The SIR’s own extended timeline, with house-to-house verification pushed to August 17 and draft rolls now due August 24, has kept voters engaged with the process for weeks, widening the window during which such scams can operate.
Authorities have reiterated that electoral information should be checked only through authorised platforms, and that names appearing correctly on an unofficial app or website does not by itself confirm the data came from a genuine electoral database. Citizens have also been advised against installing APK files circulated in the name of government services, a caution that echoes broader concerns already raised around malware-based banking fraud in India.
