The Congress party is miffed with the fact that EC has announced the poll dates in Telangana even when the issue of fake electoral rolls is being heard by the High Court for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
Besides the electoral roll discrepancies, another matter that is likely to be heard by the High court is that of the premature dissolution of assembly by K Chandrasekhar Rao who is currently the caretaker chief minister of the state.
Senior Congress leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy had moved the High Court on the issue of deletion of names and discrepancies of about 70 lakh voters. The Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar has clarified that the court had not directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to stop the process of revision of electoral rolls. “ECI will go ahead with the publication of the voters list by satisfying the court. New voters will be enrolled till 10 days before the filing of nominations,” says Rajat Kumar.
Telangana Congress Committee chief spokesperson Dasoju Sravan has said, “The Election Commission has not removed fake voters or added the over 30 lakh wrongly removed names. It was only after the Congress approached the High Court that nearly 15 lakh names were re-included in the rolls”.
Petitioners supporting the Congress had also argued that more than 20 lakh first-time voters have not been enrolled in the electoral list and have been denied their right. Questioning the premature dissolution of the assembly the petitioners have doubted whether the majority of the legislators were in favor of the decision or not.
However, K C Rao had alleged that he was compelled to dissolve the assembly as the opposition parties were planning to conspire against his government by leveling false cases against him. He is confident that his party will win and will get more votes than the previous elections. Meanwhile, the Opposition is eagerly waiting for the court’s decision.
Telangana is all set for the polls on December 7, which is three months after chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) had dissolved legislative assembly on September 6.