ECI constitutes panel to probe Amit Malviya's tweet on K'taka polls dates

Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday constituted a team to probe the alleged Karnataka assembly election dates leak to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) IT Cell head Amit Malviya.

The report has to be submitted in seven days by the probe panel in connection with the matter.

"Today during the announcement of Karnataka Assembly Election, 2018 by the Commission, it was brought to the notice of the Commission that minutes before the official announcement of the Election Schedule, Amit Malviya in a Tweet had already tweeted the date of Poll as 12th May, 2018," the ECI said in a statement.

"Though, the reports in tweets mentioned the Polling date as 12th May, 2018 and Counting date as 18th May, 2018, it was clarified that actual schedule of Karnataka Assembly Elections has the Counting date as 15th May, 2018," the statement further read.

Ahead of the ECI's official announcement of the election dates, Malviya took to Twitter to reveal the polling date as May 12 and counting as May 18.

Though Malviya was right about the polling date, he missed the mark regarding the counting date. The counting will take place on May 15.

Nevertheless, Malviya's knowledge led to social media uproar, following which Malviya deleted the tweet.