TRS focus shifts to municipal polls

With the High Court refusing to intervene in the municipal elections, the TRS and its cadres are gearing up for the poll battle.

A single judge had granted in a bunch of interim orders, a stay on elections to 75 municipalities and the Karimnagar Municipal Corporation. The High Court said it wouldn’t pass any direction on this stay, so the government is preparing to vacate the stay petitions so that the elections to those municipalities could proceed. Mr Praveen Kumar, standing counsel for the municipalities, said the interim orders pertained to discrepancies in the delimitation of wards and divisions, and so were not an “absolute” stay.

TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao has held meetings to strategise winning a majority of seats in the elections to urban local bodies. During the recent executive committee meeting, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao asked the ministers, MLAs and other leaders to prepare for polls to civic bodies which were originally slated in August. TRS sources said Mr Rao made it clear to party leaders that the municipal polls were a litmus test to check the BJP’s aggressive approach. They were to ensure that the BJP, which claims strength in urban areas, lost all its deposits in the civic polls.

The term of most of the elected bodies of the 68 old municipalities and Karimnagar, Ramagundam and Nizamabad municipal corporations ended in July.

After the formation of 73 new municipalities and seven new corporations, the government proposed elections to 138 ULBs, but the number was reduced to 121 with court cases against the division and delimitation of wards, as also the final boundaries of the new corporations.

With the HC’s interim orders, the state government could straightaway go for 66 ULBs, but the ruling party plans for all 128 ULBs.