Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao dissolved the state assembly on Thursday, almost nine months ahead of the completion of its term to enable holding of early assembly elections, and announced the list of candidates for the 119-member House.
The formal meeting of the cabinet that recommended the assembly’s dissolution lasted just 15 minutes but the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) led by Rao, also called KCR by his supporters, had been discussing early elections for months.
The chief minister then headed straight to the Raj Bhavan to hand over the cabinet’s one-line resolution to Governor ESL Narasimhan who promptly accepted the recommendation. Narasimhan has asked KCR to continue as the caretaker chief minister for now.
He forwarded the resolution to the secretary of the state assembly and within an hour, a gazette notification was announcing the dissolution of the House was issued.
KCR said while addressing a crowded press conference at Telangana Bhavan, the party’s state headquarters, he had decided to “sacrifice” his tenure in advance because of growing attacks on his government from the opposition parties.
“There is a political fragility in the state now. The opposition parties, particularly the Congress party, have been making serious allegations against me and my government without any basis and evidence,” he said.
He pointed out that the opposition parties were moving courts to stall the developmental programmes initiated by his government, holding round-table conferences to spread canards against irrigation projects and making allegations of corruption in every programme.
“All this is only to demoralise us and discourage us from going ahead in the path of development. That is precisely why we have decided to dissolve the assembly and seek a fresh mandate from the people so the wheels of progress can continue to roll on and there will be no more hindrance to the development and welfare for another five years,” KCR said.
He hoped that the elections to the Telangana assembly would be held in November along with four other states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram – and the results would be declared in December. “I spoke to the Election Commission authorities who confirmed the schedule,” he said.
KCR also announced the list of 105 candidates in the 119-member state assembly to be fielded in the next elections. “We have denied tickets to only two sitting MLAs and kept in abeyance the candidatures of five others. In the remaining seven seats, we shall finalise the candidates very soon,” he said.
KCR said the TRS would be a friendly party of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, though not a political ally. “We may have a friendly contest in the constituencies where MIM fields its candidates. That has been our stand right from the beginning,” he said.
He asserted that there was no question of forging an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in any manner.
“It is true that we have been maintaining cordial relations with the NDA government at the Centre. But that is only on a government-to-government basis. Ours is a secular party and there is no way we can join hands with the BJP.
Even BJP president Amit Shah also said there was no chance of allying with the TRS which is MIM-friendly,” he said.
KCR’s party had ended up with a clear majority in 2014, the first election held in the state that had been carved out of Andhra Pradesh after a movement led by him.
Politics analysts predicted high speed move by TRS may boomerang considering the anti BJP wave spreading across the country .
His decision to fix the election date on his own may be treated as a ploy jointly in hands favouring BJP in General election 2019 a charge congress that make and TRS joint votes with BJP in Crucial bills in parliament that can’t be easy to overlook
Also 2014 vote margin between congress and TRS may be reduced due to anti incumbency and if Congress notch up proper preroll alliances that may bring surprise for TRS
