EC hints at Telangana polls in November

​Hyderabad: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has dropped enough number of hints that Telangana Assembly elections will be held before November end at the daylong meeting held with district Collectors and Superintendents of Police here on Wednesday. 

The official team also met Chief Secretary SK Joshi, DGP Mahendar Reddy and Home Secretary Rajvi Trivedi and other top officials. They enquired the state’s readiness for the election. The 7-member ECI official delegation led by senior Deputy Election Commissioner Umesh Sinha was on a 2-day visit to the state to study the government’s preparedness to hold elections at the earliest. 

In the meeting with the district authorities on Wednesday, the EC delegation reviewed maintenance of law and order in the districts, requirement of security forces, EVM storage, financial requirement, status of revision of electoral rolls and the availability of human resources and requirement of vehicles during the election season.

The delegation expressed satisfaction on the preparedness of the state and district authorities which are ready to face elections any time. The EC officials hinted the authorities that, if all goes right, the notification is likely to be issued in October third week and the elections will be conducted in November even before the elections scheduled in the four states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram in December this year. 

The officials instructed the state authorities to be ready to face elections any time, an official source said. Addressing the press after winding up the visit, ECI Umesh Sinha said that the state official mechanism is on right line for the conduct of the elections. District level preparedness is also satisfactory.

Stating that a report on state preparedness for the elections to the ECI instantly, the official said that the issue of the fate of the voters of seven mandals in three assembly constituencies of Bhadrachalam, Pinapaka and Aswaraopet, which merged with Andhra Pradesh after the state bifurcation, will be brought to the notice of the ECI. After the merger of the seven mandals with AP, people have been considered as Andhra voters.

The demand to the extension of deadline to file objections and claims under second summary revision of electoral votes will also be put before the ECI, Sinha said that the state Chief Electoral Officer was already instructed to take up door-to-door campaign for the enrollment of new votes, set up district helplines, introduce voter enrolment on mobile and enforce SMS-based verification of the names by the voters immediately. As the final electoral rolls are to be published on October 8, the official said that action will be taken against the authorities concerned if they found guilty in the wrong deletion of votes.