The Election Commission (EC) will issue the schedule for Telangana Assembly Election in the second week of October, paving the way for the state to go to polls in the last week of November. The decision is being taken to ensure that an adequate number of Electronic Voting Machines, Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) and police personnel are available for the smoother conduct of Telangana Elections. The State EC is of the view that if five state elections are clubbed together in December, it could pose difficulty to conduct Telangana elections.
The EC had on Saturday issued orders to stop revision of photo electoral rolls in Telangana which was to be done by January 1, 2019. The state EC will now go ahead with draft rolls of January 1, 2018, to make early elections in Telangana possible.
The States Chief Electoral Officer, Rajat Kumar will submit a report to the EC on Monday on the Commission’s poll preparedness in the state. A team from the EC will also be visiting Telangana on Tuesday to take stock of the situation on the ground.
On September 6, the Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao after a Cabinet meeting at Pragathi Bhavan, the CM's camp office, in Hyderabad dissolved the Telangana Legislative Assembly. Soon after announcing elections the party also came out with a list of 105 candidates out of the 115 assembly seats.
Elections to Telangana Assembly were earlier scheduled for April-May 2019, along with the Lok Sabha polls. Now with the Telangana Assembly dissolved, Telangana is likely to go to polls along with states such as Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh, in November-December this year.
The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is already in election mode and plans to undertake 100 public meetings titled 'Prajala Aashirwad Sabha', over the course of 50 days. The first such public meeting attended by Rao was held at Husnabad in Siddipet district on September 7.