Telangana: Did KCR tell party members to prepare for early polls?

Hyderabad: Telangana Chief Minister and BRS national president K Chandrashekar Rao on Thursday told his party leaders to prepare for the state elections which he reportedly said, will be held in October this year.

According to sources, the state cabinet could ask the Governor to dissolve the Assembly, in which case the elections would be held within the time period as stipulated by the Constitution.

KCR talked of the “impending” elections while speaking to office-bearers at the BRS’s general body meeting on the party’s founding day, in Hyderabad.

Addressing the meeting, the Telangana chief minister claimed the strides that the state has made show that anything could be achieved in a “parliamentary system”.

“Now, we are moving ahead with the vision of putting the country on the path to progress with a slogan of ‘Aab Ki Bar Kisan Sarkar’,” he added, underlining the party’s ambition to mark its political and electoral footprints beyond Telangana.

BRS won 63 seats in the first Assembly election since the state was founded. It bettered its performance in the subsequent Assembly polls, bagging 88 seats.

“The BRS will win more than 100 seats in the next (Assembly) elections. Returning to power in Telangana won’t be a challenging task for us but the priority should be to win more Assembly seats than we did the last time,” the CM said.

“We will put out television advertisements and also produce (promotional) films in future to help the party reach out effectively to the masses. If necessary, the party will also launch a TV channel of its own,” the CM said.

He directed BRS leaders to identify “idle” government land in all the districts and inform his office about it so that the plots could be distributed to the poor for building houses.

“In some villages, government plots are lying idle. Submit the details of such land with survey numbers at my office. Suitable land will be distributed to the poor so that they could build houses,” he said.

Earlier, on Thursday, KCR laid floral tributes before the statue of Telangana Talli at Telangana Bhavan in Hyderabad. Later, the BRS Supremo unveiled the party flag.

The meeting of the party representatives began with an inaugural speech by BRS Secretary General and MP K Keshava Rao.