HYDERABAD: While caretaker Chief Minister waits for the announcement of dates of the Assembly elections, an Election Commission of India team on Tuesday met with representatives of all recognised political parties to seek their views on early polls. Almost all the parties, other than TRS’ ‘friendly partner’ AIMIM, raised objections on the way the Assembly was dissolved and, more importantly, how early elections would lead to the exclusion of many new and deleted voters.
Congress party representatives said that they wished for the early publication of final electoral rolls after the special summary revision (SSR). Replying to this Marri Shashidhar Reddy, Chariman of the Election Commission Coordination team said the original deadline for the SSR was in January 2019, but the early elections had reduced the overall time from four months to four weeks. “With Ganesh Chaturthi and Moharram round the corner, filing claims and objections before September 25 will be very difficult,” he said.
BJP leaders N Indrasena Reddy and S Malla Reddy said that draft rolls had not been published in most of the 119 Assembly constituencies, making it very difficult for voters to verify their details and make corrections. TDP Politburo member and former MP Ravulu Chandrasekhar said that in 2014, there were 2.89 crore voters in the State, whereas in 2018, the number of voters had come down to 2.53 crore. “There are over 36 lakh deletions in the voters list,” he said.
TRS MP Vinod Kumar said, as per Supreme Court orders,a caretaker government should not be allowed to stay for a long time. MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi, too, requested the ECI to hold elections at the earliest.