Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Thursday set aside the election of BRS’ Gadwal MLA Bandla Krishna Mohan Reddy and declared BJP national vice-president D.K. Aruna the legislator, effective from December 12, 2018, when the results were announced.
Aruna was then a member of the Congress.
The court issued the verdict after finding discrepancies between the EVM (electronic voting machine) data and the printed VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail) slips. The court also found that Mohan Reddy had not disclosed in the election affidavit property details, loans availed of by him and government dues, which amounts to corrupt practice as per the Representation of People’s Act and liable to disqualification.
Besides declaring Mohan Reddy’s election void, Justice T. Vinod Kumar of the Telangana High Court imposed a fine of '2.5 lakh on him for filing a false affidavit. Further, the BRS leader was directed to pay '50,000 to Aruna, the petitioner, in litigation costs.
In 2019, Aruna had filed an election petition challenging the returning officer declaring Mohan Reddy as the Gadwal MLA.
“When VVPAT printed slips are counted as part of random checking, it was noticed by the election agent of D.K. Aruna, that there were discrepancies and variances in terms of secured votes through EVM and printed slips of VVPATs,” the complaint stated.
Aruna said that against the 1,89,013 votes stated by the returning officer, the vote count from ballots was 1,89,281, with a difference of 268 votes. She also brought to the court’s notice that Mohan Reddy owed '1.09 crore to banks, besides another '1.21 crore, suppressed in his affidavit.
It was also submitted that Mohan Reddy, in a separate PIL in the High Court, had claimed ownership of 24.09 guntas of land in Puddur village of Gadwal mandal in Mahbubnagar district (currently Jogulamba Gadwal district), but failed to mention it in his election affidavit.
Justice Vinod Kumar said that candidates contesting the elections must be “utmost transparent”, with truthfulness in the disclosure of materials. “Such a failure is non-compliance with the provisions of the Constitution of India and Representation of People's Act,” the judge observed.
Mohan Reddy claimed that the High Court did not allow him to state his contentions and said that he would challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court.
In a media interaction at the BRS office, he hit out at Aruna, claiming that his opponents did not have faith in democracy or the election process. “Hence, they played backdoor politics,” he said.
Reiterating his stance that he won the 2018 elections by a huge majority of 37,000 votes, he said that he will win the upcoming elections by 50,000 votes.
