ECI Team Meets CEO, Discusses Election Prep

Hyderabad:An Election Commission of India (ECI) team, on an official tour of Telangana from May 29 to June 1, on Friday met Chief Electoral Officer C. Sudharshan Reddy and held discussions on matters relating to the conduct of elections.

The ECI team, led by principal secretary Mohammed Umar, secretary Navin Kumar, and section officer Ravinder Kumar, discussed with the CEO, administrative preparedness, electoral rolls, electronic voting machines (EVMs), and logistical arrangements to ensure free, fair, and efficient elections.

The team is being assisted locally by designated liaison officers from the state administration. Further meetings and field visits are scheduled during the team’s four-day tour to assess ground-level readiness and interact with district election officials.

CWC to Conduct State Survey for Flood Risk

Hyderabad:The Central Water Commission (CWC) will soon conduct a ground survey to determine possible flooding in parts of Telangana likely to be caused by the Polavaram project in Andhra Pradesh.

The CWC said the decision was taken following a request from the Polavaram Project Authority and the ‘drainage congestion studies’ will be taken up in six big streams Turubaka, Yetapaka, Edullavagu, Peddavagu, Domalavagu, and another stream that empty into the Godavari river.

The decision to conduct studies on backwaters comes in the wake of Telangana raising the issue of flooding in the state with the Union jal shakti ministry.

Meanwhile, the Union ministry, in a communication to the state government, said a consultation meeting ‘to arrive at a consensus’ over the Godavari-Cauvery link project, will be held in Hyderabad on June 24 with the CWC chairman conducting the meeting at Jal Soudha, the irrigation department headquarters here.

Forest Staff Calls Off Search for 2nd Leopard

Hyderabad:Forest department officials have called off their monitoring and search operations for a possible second leopard on the icrisat campus in the city. Forest department officials had managed to trap one leopard in a cage on April 17, three days after Icrisat staff reported that they saw two leopards. The one caught, a male, was later released in the Amrabad tiger reserve.

A senior forest department official said on Saturday that after monitoring the entire premises with camera traps for nearly a month, it was determined that for now the Icrisat campus was ‘leopard-free’ and the search has been called off.

The leopard caught at Icrisat this April is the third to be trapped there in the past decade. One leopard each was caught in 2014, and in 2019.