Telangana may head for early polls, key cabinet meet on Sunday
Hyderabad, Sep 1 : Telangana may be heading for an early polls as all eyes are on a crucial state cabinet meeting followed by a massive public meeting by the ruling TRS here on Sunday.
Amid strong indications of polls being advanced, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is all set to hold a massive show of strength.
The rally will be preceded by a meeting of the state cabinet, which is likely to decide for dissolution of Assembly, seven months ahead of its term.
TRS leaders said Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will take "key decisions" at the cabinet meeting and announce them at the public meeting.
The cabinet may pass a resolution to dissolve the Assembly and recommend this to Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan. If the Election Commission agrees, the polls may be held in December along with the elections in three other states --Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
The state cabinet will meet at 1 p.m. while the public meeting is scheduled to begin an hour later.
For the last few weeks, Rao had been dropping hints of assembly elections being advanced. He has already declared that the party will announce the candidates in September.
KCR, as Rao is popularly known, is keen to advance the assembly polls to avoid simultaneous elections to the Assembly and the Parliament.
His two meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August further added to the speculation. Over the last few days, he announced sops for various sections of people and also transferred IAS and IPS officers.
On Saturday, the Chief Minister announced 35 per cent pay hike for the employees of electricity department.
KCR's son and cabinet minister K.T. Rama Rao said the Chief Minister would take a final decision on early polls. Rama Rao, who is number two in the party and the government, is confident of TRS retaining power whenever the elections are held.
Titled "Pragati Nivedana" (Progress report), the meeting to be held at Kongara Kalan at Ibrahimpatnam on the city outskirts is expected to attract 25 lakh people. Rama Rao claims that this will be the biggest political rally in the country.
According to him, TRS has 47 lakh members and if half of them turn up, the meet would be a huge success. TRS leaders are mobilising people for the meet from across the state.
TRS, which formed the first government in Telangana after the state came into being on June 2, 2014 with the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, will highlight its achievements during the last four years while KCR is expected to sound the poll bugle.
TRS workers from various parts of state started pouring in for the meeting.
The massive mobilisation of people is expected to hit the traffic on Outer Ring Road (ORR) as thousands of vehicles will be heading towards the venue from different entry points along ORR. Rama Rao has suggested to people not attending the meeting to stay indoors.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
