In the Split Vertex Deletion (SVD) problem, the input is an n-vertex undirected graph G and a weight function w: V (G) → N, and the objective is to find a minimum weight subset S of vertices such that G − S is a split graph (i.e., there is bipartition of V (G − S) = C ] I such that C is a clique and I is an independent set in G − S). This problem is a special case of 5-Hitting Set and consequently, there is a simple factor 5-approximation algorithm for this. On the negative side, it is easy to show that the problem does not admit a polynomial time (2 − δ)-approximation algorithm, for any fixed δ > 0, unless the Unique Games Conjecture fails. We start by giving a simple quasipolynomial time (nO(log n)) factor 2-approximation algorithm for SVD using the notion of clique-independent set separating collection. Thus, on the one hand SVD admits a factor 2-approximation in quasipolynomial time, and on the other hand this approximation factor cannot be improved assuming UGC. It naturally leads to the following question: Can SVD be 2-approximated in polynomial time? In this work we almost close this gap and prove that for any ε > 0, there is a nO(log 1ε )-time 2(1 + ε)-approximation algorithm. © Daniel Lokshtanov, Pranabendu Misra, Fahad Panolan, Geevarghese Philip, and Saket Saurabh; licensed under Creative Commons License CC-BY 47th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2020).