Telangana, country’s youngest State, all set to face third Assembly election

In 2018, Telangana saw Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao dissolving the State Assembly on September 6, 2018 and seeking a fresh mandate earlier than the scheduled polls in April 2019.

Hyderabad: Telangana, the country’s youngest State, will face just its third Assembly election since formation with the Election Commission of India announcing the schedule for the polls to be held in the State on November 30.

In 2018, Telangana saw Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao dissolving the State Assembly on September 6, 2018 and seeking a fresh mandate earlier than the scheduled polls in April 2019.

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The dates of the election were notified by the ECI on October 6 and the Model Code of Conduct came into force on the same day. Along with Telangana, four other States – Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram – also had the assembly elections being held. In Rajasthan and Telangana, polling was held on December 7, whereas in Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram, polling was held on November 28. In Chhattisgarh, polling was held in two phases. The first phase was held on November 12 and the second phase was on November 20. Counting was held on December 11 for all the States..

In Telangana, polling took place in a single phase across 119 assembly seats. In all, 2,653 candidates filed nominations and among them, 465 nominations were rejected. The total number of valid nominations stood at 2,188. As many as 1821 candidates were left in the fray for 119 constituencies.

According to the final electoral rolls published on October 12, 2018, Telangana had 2,80,64,680 voters. Of these, 1.38 crore were male voters and 1.35 crore were female voters while there were 5,560 transgender voters.

The leading political parties that contested the polls included the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (Now Bharat Rashtra Samithi), Indian National Congress (INC), Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Telugu Desam Party (TDP), CPI(M), CPI, All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and the All India Forward Bloc (AIFB). For the assembly polls, the TDP, CPI and the TJS formed an alliance with the Congress.

The BRS won 88 seats, while Congress won 19, AIMIM won seven, TDP won two, BJP one and AIFB one while Independent candidates won one seat. Out of the total 2,06,95,428 votes polled, TRS polled 97,00,948 votes, the Congress polled 58,83,088, while the BJP got 14,43,799. The AIMIM got 5,61,091.