TRS trains MLAs for MLC elections

Hyderabad: The Telangana Rashtra Samiti, which has taken up the task of winning the elections to all the five Legislative Councl seats from the Assembly quota as a prestige issue, is working out a strategy to prepare its legislators to cast their votes properly.

The elections are scheduled for March 12. Preferential vote will play a crucial role in deciding the fate of the candidates, as the TRS has fielded an additional candidate to try and harness its extra votes and see him past the winning mark.

TRS president and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao nominated four candidates from the party and reserved the fifth seat for ally MIM, despite falling short of some votes.

With the two Congress MLAs and one legislator from the TD deciding to join the ruling party, its strength has now reached 93. Together with the seven MLAs of the MIM, the ruling combine now has 100 seats. It still needs five more votes for a comfortable victory for all its candidates.

Sources in the party said after the first round of voting, the MLAs mark their second and subsequent preferences which are credited to the candidates in fractions. Mr Chandrasekhar Rao has cautioned  the MLAs to be cautious while marking the preferences on polling day. Sources said that the TRS and MIM MLAs would be divided into five groups, one for each of the contestants of the ruling combine. Mr Rao would allocate the preferential voting pattern to each of the groups.

To ensure that the legislators grasp the process and remember to mark the preferences correctly, the party is planning to hold mock polling on March 10. Sources said Mr Rao was personally taking care of the voting process as any error would reflect badly on the ruling party and could strain ties with the ally.