Supreme Court stays Telangana High Court order on Gadwal MLA

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the Telangana High Court order declaring the election of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLA Bandla Krishna Mohan Reddy from Gadwal constituency as void.

Justices Surya Kant and Dipankar Datta issued notice to BJP leader DK Aruna, whom the high court declared as elected after annulling Reddy’s election, and sought her response within four weeks.

The high court had on August 24, declared Reddy’s election as void and imposed a fine of Rs 2.5 lakh on him for filing a false affidavit with his nomination form about his assets and declared Aruna as elected with retrospective effect from December, 2018, besides directing Reddy to pay her Rs 50,000 towards litigation costs. Aruna had contested the 2018 assembly election as a Congress candidate and lost the election.

She later filed an election petition against him. Aruna, who is now the national BJP vice president, had contended before the high court that Reddy concealed information about the properties he possessed while filing his election affidavit. On Monday, Reddy and his advocates told the media that he had sold his property almost four to five months ahead of the elections and hence there was no need to show it in the election affidavit.