CWC meeting in Telangana: ‘Govt may advance the elections’, says Shashi Tharoor

livemint.com:

Lok Sabha elections. Telangana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Mizoram are going to the polls later this year. Reacting to the CWC meeting in Telangana, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said there are chances that the government may advance the elections, according to a report published by Hindustan Times. “Inevitably one of the key topics is going to be current political developments in the country and the actual election prospects and certainly those who have been representing us in the India Alliance meetings, we want to brief the committee about what's happening there," Tharoor said as quoted by HT. He added, “We hope that the elections are in the usual time which is six to nine months away.

But it's also possible that the government might advance the elections as we've been hearing and we need to be prepared sooner rather than later." The CWC will meet at 2:30 pm on Saturday and deliberate on the strategy for the upcoming assembly elections and the Lok Sabha polls. On Sunday, there will be a meeting of the extended CWC to which all state party chiefs and CLP leaders, besides Parliamentary Party office-bearers, Central Election Committee members have been invited to strategize for the upcoming elections, PTI reported. "We invited 159 people, out of them 147 people are attending the meeting on Sunday," Congress general secretary KC Venugopal said.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge had on August 20 reconstituted the CWC, retaining the old guard and giving space to the young in the 84-member body. The CWC has 39 regular members, 32 permanent invitees, and 13 special invitees. These include 15 women and several new faces such as Shashi Tharoor, Sachin Pilot, and Gaurav Gogoi who are among the regular