Poll date spurs Congress to speed up campaign

​Hyderabad: With the Election Commission of India (ECI) announcing the schedule for Telangana election, the Congress is all set to speed up the poll campaign to be held for 61 days beginning from October 10 onwards. Though the Congress has formally launched the campaign on October 4 at Alampur in Gadwal district, the proposed campaign would acquire momentum.

The party leaders would address about three meetings every day in the next two months to come. The Congress has also speeded up the selection of candidates for the elections and the Pradesh Election Committee met on Saturday to pick up the probable nominees on 1:3 propotion.

The 41-member Election Committee has met under the chairmanship of PCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy at a private resort. The party state affairs incharge RC Khuntia and other leaders participated in the meeting. According to sources the PEC has picked three names for each constituency, excluding those represented by sitting MLAs, former ministers and former MLAs. The sources said that the party would give tickets to about 40 former MLAs, former ministers and sitting MLAs in the next elections.

The party leaders said that the PEC would send names for all the constituencies and the AICC would finalise the names of the candidates to the constituencies which would be contested by the party after leaving the seats to the alliance partners. They said that the AICC has held two surveys party-wise and candidate-wise with the Congress leaders of Chhattisgarh and Odisha. The PCC has also conducted two surveys in the same manner. 

A team of psephologist have conducted the surveys to assess the winning chances of aspirants. The aspirants have been given one to three ranks according to the opinion of the masses. The list being prepared by the PEC would be given to the Screening Committee of the AICC which would visit the state from October 10 to 13.

The AICC committee would match the list proposed by the PEC with the reports of the AICC surveys and would suggest the best first. This list would go to the Core Committee of AICC being headed by AK Antony. The first list of the candidates would be announced any time after October 13. It would contain the names of former and sitting MLA and former ministers. 

The second list would also be issued by the end of this month. On the other hand, the Congress has also hastened the finalisation of the Common Minimum Porgramme of the alliance. Party Campaign Committee chairman Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka held meeting with the leaders of the alliance parties on Saturday.