Will move court if KCR calls early polls in Telangana: Congress

The Congress has threatened to move court if Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao dissolves the assembly and calls early polls.

Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leaders have indicated that Rao — popularly known as KCR – could dissolve the assembly by mid-September and call fresh polls in November-December, along with state elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram. Telangana elections are due in April-May next year, along with the Lok Sabha polls.

Senior Congress leader M Shashidhar Reddy said that if KCR dissolved the assembly, his party would request the Election Commission (EC) to delay the Telangana polls until a revised voters’ list is published in January next year.

“We will request the EC not to club the Telangana polls with the elections to four states in December and delay them so that time is available for us to ensure voters’ lists are not doctored,” he said.

“If that is not done, there will be scope for legal options and we are ready to adopt those. We will move the court,” warned Reddy.

KCR is likely to announce the dissolution of the assembly in mid-September and go for elections along with the four other states where polls are due later in the year, HT reported on Saturday, citing a TRS leader familiar with the matter. By advancing the polls, the party wants to tap the “tremendous goodwill” it has among the people, the leader said on condition of anonymity.

The threat to move court only reveals the Congress’s nervousness, said Vinod Kumar Boianapalli, TRS leader and Lok Sabha MP from Karimnagar.

“They (Congress) are worried and not ready to face the people. So, what will happen if they go to court? If not November-December, elections will be held in January or February but within six months as per the SC order in an earlier matter,” he said. “In any case, assembly elections can’t be stretched beyond March.”

He said that for the Telangana elections to be held along with the four states, the assembly would have to be dissolved before September 10.

The assessment within the TRS is that going for early assembly elections will give KCR enough room for manoeuvre in the Lok Sabha polls and accordingly take a call on a national-level alliance.

KCR was the first chief minister from a non-NDA party to openly support PM Narendra Modi’s “one nation, one poll” call. The TRS had strongly pitched for simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies in its representation to the Law Commission.

Congress leader Reddy claimed, “The falling graph of the TRS government’s popularity is evident due to its unfulfilled and false promises. I am sure the move to hold early elections is to engineer illegal deletion of voters without giving adequate time for objections and verification.”

Reddy, who has met chief election commissioner OP Rawat on a number of occasions, said the move would derail the ongoing revision of electoral rolls as the final list is scheduled to come out on January 4 next year.

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