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.
Updated On – 01:17 PM, Mon – 9 October 23
Hyderabad: Telangana, the country’s youngest State, will be facing 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.
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. As per a report released by the office of the Telangana Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), 2653 candidates had filed nominations and among them, 465 nominations were rejected by the returning officers due to various reasons. The total number of valid nominations identified by the poll officers stood at 2188. As many as 1821 candidates were left in the poll fray for a total of 119 constituencies.
According to the final electoral rolls published on October 12, 2018, Telangana had 2,80,64,680 voters, of them 1.38 crore were male voters, 1.35 female and 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 and All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen(AIMIM). For the assembly polls, the TDP, CPI and the TJS had formed an alliance with the Congress party.
The ruling BRS won 88 seats, while the 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 while the Congress polled 58,83,088. The TDP got 7,25,714 votes, CPI 83,215, CPM 91,099 and the BJP 14,43,799. The AIMIM got 5,61,091, BSP 4,26,203, All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) 1,59,515 and Independents polled 6,73,609 votes.
