SC bars YSRCP MLA who smashed VVPAT machine from entering counting centre
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday barred, alongside castigating, YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) legislator Pinnelli Ramakrishna Reddy from entering the counting station on Tuesday, The News Minute reported.
Reddy was seen in video smashing a Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machine inside a polling booth in Andhra Pradesh.
A bench presided over by Justice Aravind Kumar observed, after watching the footage, that allegations of smashing a VVPAT was amounting to a “sheer mockery of the system”.
Meanwhile, senior advocate Vikas Singh, representing Ramakrishna Reddy in an undertaking said that the YSRCP Macherla MLA would not enter the counting station and its vicinity tomorrow, which the court reportedly took note of in its order.
The Supreme Court directed the Andhra Pradesh High Court to decide on ‘plea for anticipatory bail on merits without being influenced by its earlier observations granting interim protection’.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court in an interim order on May 23 barred police from taking action against Reddy till June 5 in the case.
The incident was reported at a polling booth in Macherla on May 13 with a video showing him walking into a polling booth and smashing a VVPAT machine to the ground.