In a major setback to Minister for Information Technology Ponnala Lakshmiah, the Supreme Court on Friday dismissed his special leave petition challenging the judgement of Andhra Pradesh high court on his election from Jangaon assembly constituency in 2009.

What is worse, the Supreme Court strongly reprimanded Ponnala for wasting the time of the court by filing the SLP and imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 for the same.

The SC upheld the earlier judgement of the high court which ordered that recounting should be conducted for the 2009 assembly elections in Jangaon, in which Ponnala had been declared elected over Telangana Rashtra Samithi candidate Kommuri Pratap Reddy with a slender margin. The high court gave the judgement following a petition from Pratap Reddy.

The TRS candidate argued that the election authorities had added 80 votes to Ponnala account illegally, besides counting the invalid postal ballot votes in favour of the minister. He demanded that Ponnala’s election be set aside. The high court then ordered recounting of voters. This was challenged by Ponnala in Supreme Court.