The TDP leaders asked the Chief Election Officer Mukesh Kumar Meena that why the Election Commission and also the Police failed in taking immediate action against Macherla YCP MLA Pinnelli Ramakrishna Reddy, after he destroyed EVM at a polling booth?
TDP senior leader Varla Ramaiah recalledT when Pinnelli entered the polling booth on May 13 and every one witnessed him smashing the EVM. But, he wondered that no polling personnel or police near-by complained against the MLA till the video surfaced on May 20. Even the complaint given on May 15 to the police did not mention the MLA’s name.
He asked what the Polling Officer and two constables stationed there were doing? Recalling that the polling booth was under the surveillance of webcasting, he wondered why officials at CEO’s office monitor the polling without making a formal complaint?
Shouldn’t the constables there arrest the MLA who broke the EVM?, he wondered. Ramaiah recalled that Central forces were deployed in Macherla expecting violent incidents. Then why were those forces deployed in this polling booth, which was classified as a problematic one? He expressed suspicion that whether some one influenced not to put central forces there?
He felt had the central forces been deployed there, they would have opened fire soon after MLA behaved violently. He asked whether the Polling Officer recorded this incident in his dairy? When the MLA himself broke the EVM, he asked why it was mentioned as an ‘unknown person’ in the police complaint, given after two days.
Ramaiah also wondered that after knowing that the MLA had broken EVM at a polling booth, why was he kept under house arrest, without arresting him? He felt that this laxity only gave scope for the MLA to escape from police arrest.
He also questioned why no action was taken against police officers who helped MLA to escape? Varla Ramaiah deplored that CEO Meena failed to give any answer to their questions, except giving a patient hearing. He said that they urged him to set up a table for every 500 votes during counting.
