GUNTUR: Assembly Speaker Kodela Siva Prasada Rao created a flutter on Thursday by locking himself in a polling booth in Sattenapalli Assembly constituency and police had to forcibly enter the room and shift him from the place. While YSRC alleged that Kodela forcibly entered the booth and rigged the poll, he claimed that he took shelter in the polling booth as YSRC activists tried to attack him.
It all started with Kodela reaching the 160 polling booth at Inimetla in Sattenapalli constituency and locked himself in the booth for nearly two hours. He allegedly sent out the YSRC polling agents and took control of the booth.
Soon, a large number of YSRC activists reached the booth and staged a protest. As tempers ran high and the situation seemed to go out of control, the police forcibly opened the doors of the booth. Kodela ‘fainted’ in the polling booth and was shifted from the place amid tight security as a large number of YSRC supporters tried to obstruct him. In the process, the protesters damaged the window panes of his vehicle.
Refuting the allegations as baseless, Kodela claimed that YSRC activists attacked him following which he took shelter in the polling booth. The Assembly Speaker also said the villagers treated him in a bad manner even though he developed the village with Rs 12 crore. He claimed that he went to the village after knowing that the YSRC activists were resorting to election malpractices, but suddenly they attacked him. He said the YSRC activists were instigated by the party candidate Ambati Rambabu. “The YSRC activists pelted stones and threw sand on me,” he said.
Ambati, however, alleged that Kodela tried to create panic among people of the village by capturing the booth.