Telangana polls will be held along with that of 4 other states

Counting of votes will be held the same day for all the states.

The Assembly elections in Telangana will be held along with those of four other states—Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram—between the last week of November and the first week of December, according to information reaching here from the Election Commission (EC). The counting of votes will be held on the same day for the five states.

Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Rajath Kumar received definite indications to this effect from the EC on Friday evening. A.K. Sharma, a senior consultant of EC, who visited the city earlier in the day, too, told officials to be prepared to face the polls, as the schedule is expected to be announced by 15 October. The EC is planning to complete the process of elections in all five states by 15 December.

Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat will be visiting Hyderabad by 10 October to review the arrangements and the schedule will be announced after that. The term of the Mizoram Assembly expires by 15 December, while that of Chhattisgarh by 5 January, Madhya Pradesh by 7 January and the term of the Rajasthan Assembly ends by 20 January.

A senior official in the CEO office here told this newspaper that the state government is geared up to hold the elections anytime from the third week of November and the same was told by the official team of EC led by Umesh Sinha when they came here last week. Sinha made a presentation before the EC on the poll-preparedness of Telangana on Thursday.

The only hurdle for the announcement of the schedule is a batch of writ petitions filed before the Supreme Court by former Congress minister Marri Shashidhar Reddy and others, seeking orders not to conduct the polls without adding around 20 lakh voters whose names were deleted from the rolls on 1 January 2018. The SC issued notices to the state government and the EC and posted the matter to 8 October.

Reddy, in his petition, has alleged that the state government has removed these names from the voters’ list in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) limits, purely on political grounds. Reddy said that the CEO’s schedule to revise the voters’ list up to 23 September was not enough and that more time was needed to include all eligible voters.

Sources in the CEO said that the issue figured in the regular meeting of EC on Thursday and it was felt that the petition won’t be a difficulty to go ahead with the election schedule by the second week of next month. Enough time—two weeks—was given for revision of voters’ list and as many as 20 lakh new applications for inclusion in the rolls, the sources pointed out.

GHMC commissioner and election officer for the city Dana Kishore told The Sunday Guardian that wider publicity was given to electoral rolls revision and there was a huge response from the newly eligible voters this time. “The names deleted from the city were either bogus votes or those who had migrated to Andhra,” he said.

The CEO office also pointed out that the issue of deletion of voters was raised only by the Congress and none of the other parties—national and regional—have talked about it. Officials also pointed out that the issue of transferring the seven revenue mandals of Khammam district to Andhra Pradesh, too, was sorted out by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs and that these votes were clubbed to the two Assembly seats.

As the Telangana Assembly has been dissolved on 6 September by the TRS government that sought early polls, the EC has time to hold elections here within six months by March 2019, when the Lok Sabha elections would be around. However, the EC wants to hold Telangana Assembly elections along with those of four states as per a Supreme Court verdict, said the CEO official.

The EC issued a notification on Thursday making it clear that the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) came into effect in Telangana as the Assembly has been dissolved and that there was a caretaker government headed by K. Chandrasekhar Rao. The EC said that the CM and the ministers should not launch any new schemes or preferably stay in their official residences and use government vehicles too.

Referring to the criticism of some Congress leaders, including Shashidhar Reddy, that the EC has been following the dictates of the ruling TRS, the official said that when a state validly dissolves the Assembly and makes all necessary arrangements for conduct of polls, the EC cannot sit on the request and delay the polls. He, however, said that the results will be announced simultaneously for all five states.

The elections will be held in a single phase for Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Telangana, while Chhattisgarh might go for two phases due to Maoist threat. The EC called for reports from the DGPs on security arrangements in the Maoist affected areas, especially after last week’s killing of Andhra MLA K. Sarveswara Rao.

Sudden spurt in Maoist activity and broad daylight killing of Andhra Pradesh MLA Kidari Sarveswara Rao and former MLA Siveri Soma in Araku valley of Visakhapatnam district on 23 September, has underscored the laxity on the part of the police and paramilitary forces. Now, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) foresees escalated Maoist threat to Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh that will go to elections soon.

The audacious manner in which 60 Maoists, mostly women and youth below 25 years, took away the MLA and an ex-MLA along with their gunmen in the presence of a dozen of their followers, barely 20 km from Araku town and conducted a 15-minute kangaroo court roadside and gunned them down, indicated the utter unpreparedness of the cops. Both the MLA and ex-MLA are tribals (STs).

A detailed investigation is on by the MHA, but a preliminary inquiry by Andhra police has revealed that the Araku police had failed to