Telangana Polls: Notification issued, nominations begin

The ECI gazette notification is for elections to 96 Lok Sabha seats in 10 States, including Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir.

Hyderabad: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday issued gazette notifications for elections to the 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana along with that for the by-election to the Secunderabad Cantonment Assembly constituency on May 13.

With the notification, the process of receiving nominations has also been set in motion. April 25 is the last date for filing of nominations. The scrutiny of nominations will be on April 26 while the last date for withdrawal of candidatures is April 29.

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In Telangana, polling in all 17 Lok Sabha constituencies and in the Secunderabad Cantonment will be held on May 13. Polling in 104 Assembly segments in the State will be held from 7 am to 5 pm while in the remaining 13 Left Wing Extremism affected segments, it will conclude at 4 pm.

Over 3.30 crore voters, more than half of them women, will be voting the polls, which will pit the ruling Congress against the main opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BRS won 9 of the 17 seats in 2019, while the BJP won four. The Congress managed three while the Hyderabad seat remained with the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), who have been winning the seat since 1984.

This time around, while the BRS and the BJP have announced candidates for all 17 seats, the Congress is yet to declare candidates for Khammam, Karimnagar and Hyderabad. The Cantonment bypoll was necessitated after the tragic demise of BRS sitting MLA Lasya Nanditha, who died in a road accident in February.

Meanwhile, soon after the process for receiving nominations began at 11 am on Thursday, candidates across the State began filing nominations, with 48 nominations received on the day.

BJP candidates DK Aruna (Mahabubnagar) and Etala Rajender (Malkajgiri) filed their nominations. Aruna filed her papers before the Returning Officer at the Mahabubnagar Collectorate in the presence of senior leader K. Laxman and others.

She had lost in 2019 to Manne Srinivas Reddy of BRS by over 77,000 votes. Srinivas Reddy is in the fray this time as well, while Congress has nominated Challa Vamshi Chand Reddy. Etala Rajender filed his nomination at the Medchal Collectorate along with his family members and supporters.

Earlier in the day, union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri visited Etala’s house. Four candidates including BJP’s M Raghunandan Rao filed nominations in Medak, while one set of nominations was filed in Zaheerabad on behalf of Congress candidate Suresh Shetkar.