The breakneck speed with which the Telangana assembly was dissolved and the communique was sent to the Election Commission of India on Thursday is a clear indication of how Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and caretaker chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has gained control over all the systems in the government and even the Raj Bhavan.
KCR took the decision to dissolve the assembly only after getting confirmation from the Centre that the Telangana would go to elections along with the four other states – Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in November/December.
KCR himself told the media that he had taken the decision after holding consultations with the Election Commission authorities personally and that his special representative Rajiv Sharma sitting in Delhi to get the schedule confirmed.
And the TRS chief came to know well in advance that the EC would take a final review of the election schedule for the four states on Friday.
So, he had to hurriedly dissolve the assembly by Thursday afternoon and intimate the same to the EC so that Telangana could also be discussed along with the four other states during the Friday meeting for poll preparedness.
Normally, if the cabinet takes a decision on assembly dissolution, there is a lengthy procedure to be followed before the state is considered for fresh elections.
The cabinet resolution will be sent to the Governor, who accepts it and asks the chief minister to continue as caretaker CM.
The file, then, is sent to the assembly secretary for issuing a government order in the name of Governor stating that the house is dissolved.
Subsequently, the draft notification is sent to the government printing press for publishing the same in the Gazette Notification. This Gazette Notification is sent to the chief electoral officer in Hyderabad, who in turn will send the same to the EC in Delhi.
But what happened on Thursday was a real surprise. Within minutes of the cabinet adopting the resolution, KCR took it to the Governor personally.
Even as the TRS chief was still in meeting with the Governor, the media offices got the press communique from Raj Bhavan within five minutes stating that the Governor accepted the cabinet recommendation and asked KCR to continue as caretaker CM.
A couple of minutes later, the GO copy was also sent to the media through mail and WhatsApp and in less than half an hour of KCR leaving Raj Bhavan, the media also got the Gazette notification on the dissolution of the House!
This has surprised the media persons as to how fast things had moved. It takes at least five to 10 minutes for the Raj Bhavan authorities to prepare a press release after Governor gave the approval to the cabinet resolution.
Similarly, it would take at least an hour or two for the signed order being sent to the assembly secretariat and the GO is prepared.
And it would take at least two to three hours for the order being sent to the Government Printing Press, which is at least eight kilometres away and published.
Once the order is published, it comes back to the assembly secretariat, which then sends it to the EC authorities.
But, everything happened in a span of half an hour to one hour. It does mean, all of them – press note, GO, gazette notification and intimation to the EC happened were already prepared in anticipation of the cabinet resolution.
Once KCR presented the same, all of them were released to the media one after the other in a short span!
