StatesAndhra Pradesh
YSRCP MLC Lella Appireddy arrested after Guntur road protest over a ballot box
Police held the opposition legislator after midnight over a sit-in at Nallapadu, where party workers stopped a ballot box from Thursday's parishad vote and alleged tampering.
Key points
- YSRCP MLC Lella Appireddy was arrested after midnight following a road protest at Nallapadu in Guntur.
- Party workers had stopped a ballot box from Vengalayapalem, alleging officials meant to swap it.
- Police booked him for obstructing government duties; he was expected in court on Friday.
Guntur police arrested YSRCP MLC Lella Appireddy after midnight on Thursday night, hours after he joined party workers who had blocked a road at Nallapadu in a dispute over a ballot box from the parishad elections.
Police registered a case against him for obstructing government duties and for staging a road blockade, and he was held overnight at the Nallapadu police station. He was expected to be produced in court on Friday.
How the standoff began
The trouble started after polling closed on Thursday in Vengalayapalem, as election staff moved the ballot boxes to a strong room. YSRCP workers, among them a candidate, stopped a vehicle near Nallapadu Centre and alleged that officials were trying to swap the boxes. They demanded that the box stay where they could see it.
The workers then sat on the road, holding up traffic on the Guntur to Nallapadu stretch. Appireddy reached the spot and joined the sit-in, which went on for about two hours, according to one account.
Police dispersed the protesters and took the disputed box into their custody. The party-aligned account says the police used lathis to clear the road, and that Appireddy was first taken to Nagarampalem police station and moved to Nallapadu at around 2 am.
A tense close to polling day
Neither the police nor election officials have publicly answered the YSRCP’s tampering charge, and there was no word yet on the court’s decision at the time of writing.
The arrest caps a polling day in which the YSRCP accused the ruling coalition of detaining its leaders to rig the vote. On Thursday the party protested the house arrest of its Nandyal leader Byreddy Siddharth Reddy, who it said had only gone home to vote. Counting for the MPTC and ZPTC seats is due on November 7.