EC: Telangana polls at the end of the year, final voter list by October 8

The Telangana Assembly elections are likely to occur at the year-end, alongside the state poll for the four other states. On September 11, a team from the Election Commission will visit Telangana and assess the situation.

The Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar is leaving for Delhi a day before the Election Commission’s team visits Telangana. They have prepared a report that states all the arrangements to conduct the elections. The election notification is set to come out in the first week of October, the polls will be held at the year-end. 8 October will be the date for final publication of the electoral roll, which means elections may be held any time after this date.

The Assemblies of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Mizoram are due to end between December 15 and January 20. The Telangana Assembly has been dissolved and the term ended on September 6.

The Assembly election for Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram are to take place towards the end of 2018. The term for the Telangana Assembly was supposed to end on June 19, 2019 but the TRS government chose to dissolve it and are seeking an early poll.

"Whenever House is dissolved prematurely, as per Supreme Court guidelines laid down in 2002, the ECI is required to initiate immediate steps for holding elections for constituting the legislative Assembly on the first occasion and in any case, within six months from the date of premature dissolution of the assembly," said Om Prakash Rawat, the Chief Election Commissioner.

"The Supreme Court has ruled clearly that in case of the House dissolution, polls should be held on the first occasion because caretaker governments cannot continue and get the advantage. You cannot dissolve the House and continue for six months as a caretaker government," Om Prakash Rawat told media hours before the Commission's meeting on the demand for an early election following the dissolution of the Telangana Assembly on Thursday.

"Elections have to be held as soon as possible. A decision will be taken keeping in mind various court rulings on the issue and prevailing ground reality," the CEC said, adding that the Commission holds polls within the legal framework to ensure they are free, fair and credible.

The Commission citied the malfunction of the VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail) machines during the recent by-polls in many places, and they were working to fix the problem.

"We are facing one constraint as of now. In many places during the by-polls the VVPAT malfunctioned, somewhere the complaints were about 5 per cent, eight per cent and 11 per cent. The technical committee of the Commission is working to fix the problem in the VVPAT after doing the root analysis of the problem," he said.

He also said that the Commission would get the electronic voting machines (EVMs) by September 30 and the VVPATs by November 30. "And as the Commission has committed in the all-party meeting that the elections would be held with the VVPATs... so the elections that are possible within the VVPAT numbers, it won't be any issue for us.

The Telangana Rashtra Samiti is set to announce the candidate list in 7- 10 days. The TRS Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced that two sitting MLA’s were going to be dropped and the names of five other MLA’s in terms of their candidature were to be reconsidered in the list of Telangana Rashtra Samiti candidates. Besides from these names, all the other MLA’s were to be re-nominated in 105 constituencies.

Mr. Rao told the media he expected the election at the earliest along with polls to the Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram Assemblies.

His expectation was based on his interaction with the Chief Election Commissioner sometime back. Two senior officials from the State had also met the Election Commissioners, he said.

( with inputs from NDTV and the Deccan Chronicle)