September 6, 2018
Telangana will have early elections, possibly along with the general elections to Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao on Thursday recommended the dissolution of the state assembly nine months ahead of schedule.
The Telangana CM is sure that the Election Commission would be holding state polls along with general elections in three north Indian states in November and results declared in December.
State governor ESL Narasimhan readily accepted the one-line recommendation of the chief minister and asked him to continue as the caretaker chief minister.
Though a formal decision was taken today, KCR and his party cadres were openly talking about early elections for months. The basic idea behind the decision, sources said, was to deny Congress time and chance to regroup as also to take the advantage of good monsoon. If elections were held along with general elections to Lok Sabha in May, it would be summer and drinking water shortages and power outages would add to the overall mood of the people. Which is why, KCR recommended the dissolution of the house and go for early elections.
More important, recently KCR went on a people welfare programme spree and touched almost every section of the society in distributing the largesse of the government. He hopes to cash in on the popularity garnered by the welfare programmes aimed the poor and agrarian sector.
KCR told media persons after his decision, that the Congress was his enemy number one and launched into a diatribe against the Congress and its leaders dating back to Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and up to Rahul Gandhi. For the AICC president, KCR had the choicest disdain. “Rahul Gandhi is the biggest buffoon,” KCR said in a statement that brought the discourse level to new lows in the state. See how he hugged the PM and then winked. The whole country has seen it, he said.
Clearly, KCR is aiming at destroying the Congress and through this he has already given indication of his political preferences. If such a situation arose, in the post poll scenario after general elections to Lok Sabha, KCR could veer towards supporting Modi and NDA.
Though for the record the Telangana caretaker chief minister denied that he had anything to do with the BJP.
“I have government to government relations with the Central government in the overall interests of the state,” he said trying his best to distance from the idea and fight the perception that he was close to the BJP.
“No opposition party is close to us,” the chief minister said quoting a string of surveys he got done. “It is to stop the false propaganda of the opposition and its lies that I am going to the peoples’ court,” KCR said. The Congress is a Delhi party and TDP is an Andhra Party, KCR said dismissing both these of no consequence in the state where he said there was no opposition to him.
The Congress is scared of early elections, KCR said adding that he was going to fight over 100 seats.