The YSR Congress Party has urged the Election Commission of India to disqualify Sattenapalli MLA and Assembly Speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao for his reported admission that he had incurred expenses to the tune of Rs. 11.5 crore in the 2014 elections to the Legislative Assembly.
YSR Congress leader Ambati Rambabu who lost to Dr. Sivaprasada Rao with a margin of 924 votes complained to the Commission that Dr. Sivaprasada Rao had confessed to the huge expenditure in an interview to a leading Telugu news channel. Dr. Sivaprasada Rao reportedly said he had spent Rs. 11.5 crore as against the Rs. 30,000 he incurred during the elections in 1983.
The comments were made during a Face to Face programme arranged by the channel on the subject money power in politics.
Mr. Rambabu, in a petition submitted to Chief Electoral Officer Bhanwarlal, quoted Section 123 (6) of the Representation of the People Act (RPA) which clearly said incurring or authorising expenditure in contravention of Section 77 was a corrupt practice for the purposes of the Act and any candidate found guilty of corrupt practices was liable for disqualification.
The Central Government had fixed the permissible expenditure for Assembly elections per constituency at Rs. 28 lakh which by implication meant that any candidate who had spent more than that had unequivocally indulged in corrupt practices within the meaning of Section 123 (6) and was hence, liable for disqualification.
He said the Supreme Court had held that the Commission could go into the correctness of the account of election expenses filed by the candidate and disqualify the candidate under Section 10 of the RPA in case the account was found to be incorrect or untrue.
