Hyderabad: In a strong rebuttal, Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat on Friday denied that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had called him to speak about the TS election schedule.
“We will be able to take a decision on conducting the elections after considering several issues,” Rawat said. Mr Rawat said elections should be conducted within six months of the dissolution of the Assembly, but the Supreme Court had said that priority be given to holding elections to a House that had been dissolved. He said it was not good to continue with a caretaker CM for six months.
He said that the opinion of the Supreme Court was to see that the caretaker government should not get an advantage so elections should be conducted on priority. Mr Rawat said, “It is my responsibility to meet persons and speak to those who are connected with the elections.” Accordingly, the Election Commission had met TS government chief adviser Rajiv Sharma and other officials.
Mr Rawat said the Election Commission would never comment on speculations and developments. He said that conducting Assembly elections in Telangana state would depend on preparedness of the state Chief Electoral Office. He said the TS elections may be conducted along with the four other states, before or after that.
The Election Commission has decided to send a team to Hyderabad on September 11 to study the preparedness for conducting Assembly elections.
The team will be headed by senior deputy election commissioner Umesh Sinha. The team will submit a report to the Election Commission and based on which the election schedule will be decided.
