Note for Vote Haunting Chandrababu Naidu

VIJAYAWADA: The Supreme Court will hear the Note for Vote case on Oct 4, in which the then MLC Elvis Stephenson was offered Rs 50 lakh cash for casting his vote in favour of Telugu Desam in the MLC elections.

YSR Congress MLA Alla Ramakrishna filed the petition to include TD chief Chandrababu Naidu as an accused in the case. The sensational case was known as the ‘Cash-for-vote’ scam case in 2015. Naidu allegedly offered cash to purchase the vote from Elvis Stephenson.

Naidu is already facing the AP Skill Development, Amaravati Inner Ring Road and AP FibreNet cases now.

The petition will be taken up for hearing by a bench of Justice MM Sundaresh and Justice Sanjay Kumar on Oct 4.

In his petition, Ramakrishna Reddy submitted that the name of the TD leader Naidu was repeatedly mentioned in the charge sheet filed by Telangana ACB special court and therefore his name must be included in this case. Earlier, the Mangalagiri MLA stated that the ACB had allegedly failed to take the case to a logical conclusion.  

MLA Ramakrishna Reddy had approached the ACB court at Hyderabad complaining that though the first report of the ACB  in the Cash for Vote scam had referred to the name of  Chandrababu Naidu 22 times, the investigation agency did not name him as an accused.

In his petition, Reddy requested the court to direct the Telangana ACB to include Naidu as the prime accused.

The principal special judge of the ACB court at Hyderabad, on August 29, 2016 directed the ACB, Telangana, to re-investigate the case and file its report by Sept 29. Before the ACB court, the ACB filed a memo stating that  there was no necessity of a re-probe, but they would file  a report  on the evidence against  Naidu.

Challenging this, Naidu approached the then common high court, seeking quash of the ACB court order. Naidu had questioned the locus standi of a Ramakrishna Reddy approaching the Telangana ACB court seeking a fresh probe.

Hearing Naidu’s petition, Justice Raja Elango on Sept 3, 2016, stayed the ACB court orders and directed the ACB to file its counter for the full-hearing of the case after eight weeks. In the counter, the ACB submitted that there was no need to re-probe the case as it had thoroughly investigated the case.

In Dec 2016, Justice Sunil Chowdary of the common high court passed the final verdict, by quashing the ACB court orders, which gave a big relief to Naidu from not being probed by the ACB in the cash-for- vote scam.

The high court said Ramakrishna Reddy had no locus standi to seek a probe against Naidu in the said case as he was not an aggrieved party or not concerned with the case in any way.

Challenging the same, MLA Ramakrishna  Reddy approached the Supreme Court in 2017, seeking  directions for inclusion of Chandrababu Naidu's name as accused and filed another petition before the apex court to transfer the probe in the Cash for Vote scam from Telangana ACB to CBI.

He alleged that the Telangana ACB had taken two different stands vis-à-vis investigating Naidu's role at the ACB Court and at the common HC, Hyderabad.

These two petitions are pending in the Supreme Court since 2017.

Counsels for Naidu filed counters stating that Ramakrishna Reddy does not have the locus standi to file the cases. At last now, the  cases have been listed on Oct 4. The MLA Reddy expressed the hope to get justice from the apex with the restart of hearing of the petition.