Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Thursday recommended dissolution of the Assembly months before its term was to end, driven by the hope that chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao's charisma would give the Telangana Rashtra Samithi a second spell in power and the urge to avoid simultaneous Lok Sabha and state elections.
Ending weeks of intense speculation, Rao chaired a meeting of the state cabinet, which adopted the resolution urging governor E.S.L. Narasimhan to dissolve the House. The governor accepted the recommendation and asked Rao, who headed the state's first government, to continue as caretaker chief minister.
"The governor, while accepting the recommendation of the chief minister and the council of ministers, has requested K. Chandrashekar Rao and his council of ministers to continue in office as a caretaker government. Chandrashekar Rao has agreed to this request," a Raj Bhavan media communiqué said.
The Congress and some other Opposition parties cried foul over the development, calling it the result of a "dubious pact" between Rao and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Speculation had been rife over the past few weeks about the likelihood of Rao going for an early election as he did not want national issues raised during next year's Lok Sabha polls to overshadow local factors, which the TRS feels are in its favour.
In normal circumstances, the Assembly elections in Telangana would have coincided with the Lok Sabha polls likely in April-May 2019.
Narasimhan is expected to send a report to the Centre on the developments and communicate the Telangana government's decision to the Election Commission. The final call on whether to conduct an early election will be taken by the panel, which has six months till March to hold the polls.
A home ministry official said in New Delhi it was up to the poll panel to decide whether it wanted elections in Telangana to take place with Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram in November-December.
"Today, it's KCR versus nobody. Six months later, it would have become a KCR versus Modi campaign," TRS veteran K. Kesava Rao, an MP, told a news channel.
Sources in the ruling party said KCR wanted to cash in on what he believed was a "positive atmosphere" in favour of his government.
The Congress reacted sharply to the development, saying KCR's decision reflected a "dubious pact" with Modi.
"If simultaneous elections were to be held for the Lok Sabha and the Assembly, it would have turned into a Rahul Gandhi versus Modi fight in Telangana and benefited the Congress," party chief spokesperson in Telangana Sravan Dasoju said.
