The Election Commission has written to the president of the legal cell of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) asking how a person with criminal antecedents could be a part of a delegation led by TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu during his visit to the poll body on Saturday.

The EC in its letter has said that when Naidu visited, he was accompanied by one Hari Prasad who was one of the delegates who had repeatedly raised various technical issues regarding functioning of EVMs and had claimed that he had the technical expertise in the field. The letter stated that it was decided that Prasad would get a detailed briefing from the technical team of the EC.

“However, when this technical person came it turned out that he was Hari Prasad who was involved in a criminal case regarding alleged theft of EVM machine in 2010 which an FIR was filed...Whatever maybe the eventual outcome of the investigation, it would be appreciated that such antecedents do not inspire confidence.

“This is completely intriguing as to how a so called technical expert with these antecedents was allowed to be part of the delegation led by N Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and President, TDP,” the letter from EC said.

It also stated that the incident be brought to the notice of Naidu.

The Andhra CM had earlier visited the EC and met Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora here and submitted a memorandum alleging that a large number of EVMs malfunctioned during polling in the State on Thursday and inadequate security led to incidents of violence.