Karnataka Assembly poll date leak: Malviya tells Election Commission he got information from news channel

BJP's IT cell chief Amit Malviya, whose tweet declaring the Karnataka Assembly poll date before the Election Commission's announcement triggered a controversy, and a Karnataka news channel have told the poll panel that the source of their information was Times Now news channel.

Times Now has told the Election Commission that it got the information from "informed sources". It also said that "given that the information was not entirely accurate, it is obvious it was not a leak".

The three have responded to a notice by a probe committee set up by the poll panel yesterday to investigate the sources of the leak.

Ahead of the official announcement by Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat yesterday morning, Malviya had tweeted that voting will be held on May 12 and the counting will take place on May 18. He was correct about the day of the voting, but got the counting date wrong. According to the schedule announced by the Election Commission, the counting will take place on May 15.

This prompted the EC to set up a committee to investigate the sources of the leak.

Today, the EC made public the responses by Malviya, Times Now and Suvarna News, a Kannada new channel.

Suvarna News said, the poll schedule was first reported by Times Now and it took the same news. It said it had no sources inside the poll panel.

Malviya has been maintaining that he got the information from Times Now.