Telangana election 2018 : 10.15% voter turnout; EVM snag delays polling

Telangana is voting today to choose the winner after Congress-TDP, TRS and BJP’s high voltage campaigns. Track LIVE updates on Telangana Assembly election 2018

Elections: Voting in Telangana has begun. Polling for the Telangana Assembly Election 2018 will end at 5 pm in 106 constituencies, while in 13 constituencies, which were classified as Left-Wing Extremist-affected, polling ends at 4 pm. Political fortunes of 1,821 candidates will be decided in the first full-fledged election in India’s youngest state. Over 28 million electorates are eligible to exercise their franchise in the State, which has a total of 32,815 polling stations across.

In this triangular contest, the Congress-led alliance will be challenging the ruling TRS, and the BJP. Telangana polls are extremely crucial for the caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR). The assembly polls in Telangana were originally scheduled to be held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections next year, but the House was dissolved on September 6 as per a recommendation by the state cabinet. It is to be seen if KCR’s gamble to opt for early elections pays off. Meanwhile, the Congress stitched together an alliance with “Prajakutami” (People’s Front) along with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS) and the CPI to take on the ruling TRS.

Read our full coverage on Telangana Assembly Election 2018

Key candidates

KCR, his 14 cabinet colleagues including a son and a nephew and state presidents of the Congress and the BJP are among 1,821 candidates in the fray for Friday’s Assembly elections.

All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Akbaruddin Owaisi, state Congress working President A. Revanth Reddy and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) founder N.T. Rama Rao’s granddaughter N. Suhasini are among the other key candidates whose political fortunes will be decided in the polling. Revanth Reddy, Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka are also among the key candidates.

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Telangana’s Rythu Bandhu scheme fails farmers, flops in curbing their anger

Farm distress in Telangana is rooted in the larger failure of land reforms and redistribution in the state, as well as a heightening unviability of the farm economy

Economy Policy: July 6, 2017, had started as an ordinary day for 26-year-old Ramavath Challi, who had spent it picking cotton for a daily wage. However, on returning home that evening, she had found the entire thanda (tribal hamlet) gathered there, surrounding her husband Madhu’s lifeless body. “Appula baadha padaleka ayina mandu taagindu,” she told IndiaSpend on a recent November day, her voice choking. Pressured by debt, the 29-year-old had consumed pesticide.

Paucity of rains had caused the cotton crop on their five-acre patch to fail for four consecutive years, and Madhu had racked up loans totaling Rs 6 lakh ($8,500), mostly from private moneylenders, in part to dig two borewells. These borewells had failed–groundwater levels have fallen drastically across Telangana–and Madhu had been struggling to repay his debt on which the interest was 24% annually.|Rythu Bandhu scheme

It was only after Madhu’s death that Challi realised the extent of their debt, when lenders demanded their money back. A year-and-a-half on, Challi is yet to receive any compensation from the state government because the local revenue department has refused to treat Madhu’s death as farm suicide because the land title was in his mother’s name.

Challi has been managing the farm by herself. She expects to make Rs 20,000 this year–Rs 1,600 per month or Rs 53 a day, less than the World Bank’s $1.5 (Rs 106) poverty cut-off. The yield is likely to be low due to scanty rainfall. In a good year, the farm yields six to seven quintals (100 kg) per acre; this year, it might give just three.

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