Elections in Telangana will be held in a single-phase on December 7 and the counting of votes will be held on December 11, Election Commission announced on Saturday. The 199-seat Telangana assembly will go to polls along with Rajasthan. The Model Code of Conduct comes into force with immediate effect, Election Commissioner OP Rawat said.
Along with Telangana and Rajasthan, EC also announced the dates for the upcoming elections in Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Madhya Pradesh. The elections in Chhattisgarh will be held in two phases on 12 and 20th November while voting in Mizoram and Madhya Pradesh will be held on 28 November. The entire election exercise will end by December 15.
While the term of the Mizoram Assembly ends on December 15, the terms of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan assemblies are to end on January 5, 2019, January 7 and January 20 respectively.
Elections in Telangana were necessitated after the Governor accepted Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao's recommendation to dissolve the Assembly. The elections were scheduled to be held along with the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 but at a massive political rally, the CM sought a fresh mandate to continue working for the people.
It is being suspected that the decision to advance the state elections is primarily due to the fear that Lok Sabha elections could have an impact on how the state votes for its own government. It is also feared that local issues could get hijacked if state assembly elections happen around the same time as the Lok Sabha elections.
