Telengana to have early polls; assembly to be dissolved

Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday recommended dissolving the state assembly, nine months before its term ends, to pave the way for early polls in the state.

The state cabinet, which met under the leadership of chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao at his camp office at Begumpet at around 1.15 pm, passed a one-line resolution seeking dissolution of the assembly.

The meeting went on for about 15 minutes before formally passing the resolution.

Later, the chief minister drove straight to Raj Bhavan to meet Governor ESL Narasimhan and submitted the copy of the cabinet resolution on dissolution of the state assembly.

From there, he went to Telangana Martyrs Memorial at Gun Park in front of the state assembly to pay tributes to the martyrs who laid down their lives in their struggle for separate Telangana state. Later, the TRS chief would have a meeting with the outgoing MLAs and other functionaries at the Telangana Bhavan to make them gear up for the early elections.

At around 2.30 pm, he will address a press conference at Telangana Bhavan to explain the reasons for his decision to dissolve the assembly and go for early elections in the state.

On Friday, KCR will held yet another massive public meeting at Husnabad in Siddipet district. Named as “Praja Deevena Sabha” (Meeting to seek blessings of the people), it will be the launching pad for KCR kick-start his virtual election campaign asking for the people’s mandate for a second successive term.

“In 2014, too, KCR began his election campaign from Husnabad. Now, he is going to sound the poll bugle from this place again. He is going to address as many as 100 public meetings in a span of 50 days,” KCR’s nephew and Irrigation minister T Harish Rao said.

The Assembly term is till May 2019 and elections in normal course would be conducted along with the Lok Sabha polls.