Telangana polls: CEC OP Rawat to meet 9 parties, state chief electoral officer to review poll preparedness

Hyderabad: A team headed by Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat would be meeting nine recognised political parties Monday evening. The team comprising 11 members will be in the city for three days to review the poll preparedness and leave for the national capital on 24 October, an official release said. “The OP Rawat team will be meeting nine recognised political parties in the evening between 4.30 and 6 pm at Hotel Taj Krishna. Each party will be given 19 minutes to voice its views. [caption id=“attachment_4407809” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat. PTI[/caption] Later the team will have meeting with the Telangana Chief Electoral officer Rajat Kumar and police nodal officers,” it said. Election Commissioners Sunil Arora and Ashok Lavasa would also be coming here as part of the team, Rajat Kumar had earlier said. “They would review the preparedness for the polls. If there anything that their attention is drawn then they will look into that also,” Kumar had told PTI. The is the first visit of the EC after the election schedule for the state was announced. The team would meet all the electoral officers and Superintendents of police of all the districts on Tuesday, the release said. On Wednesday, it will hold meetings with Senior officials of Income Tax Department, Railways, Airport and various Banks. On 24 October, the Rawat team is expected to meet with the chief secretary SK Joshi and DGP Mahendar Reddy. It would leave for the national capital on the same day after addressing a press conference in the afternoon, the release added. The Election Commission (EC) had on 6 October announced the election schedule for five states, including Telangana, which will go to the polls on 7 December. The assembly polls in Telangana were originally scheduled to be held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections next year, but the Assembly was dissolved on September 6 as per a recommendation by the state cabinet.