Evening Pulse: Owaisi takes SIR to the Supreme Court as Revanth pitches a $3-trillion Telangana

Telangana spent Wednesday talking about two very different futures. In the courts, the question was who stays on the voter roll. At HITEX, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy described a $3-trillion state. In between came a reported setback for the road meant to link that ambition to the districts. The thread running through all three is trust: in the Election Commission's lists, in the government's promises, and in how land and power change hands.

Since this morning, the fight over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has moved into the Supreme Court. Hyderabad MP and AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi filed a writ petition challenging the way the revision is being run, The South First and ANI reported. His advocate, Nizamuddin Pasha, mentioned it before Chief Justice Surya Kant's bench and asked for it to be heard on Thursday with similar petitions. The South First reported that the CJI said the court would examine the request, so the listing was not confirmed. The plea questions whether forms can be changed through software and asks for the SIR to be paused until the case is decided. ANI reported that Owaisi also filed a review of the court's SIR judgment.

The case in Hyderabad matters more to voters this week. At Tuesday's hearing in the Telangana High Court, the Election Commission's counsel said voters dropped from the final roll after attending hearings and filing documents would get reasoned orders that they can appeal, Siasat and Telangana Today reported. He also said that where no order is passed, the voter's name could be treated as included. The court did not dismiss the petition, Siasat said, and will hear it again on Thursday. Siasat added that, as of 12 October, over 2.42 crore of the 2.65 crore voters on the draft roll had been marked for inclusion, about 90 per cent.

That puts Thursday in sharp focus. The special enrolment camps we flagged this morning open at every polling station on 15 and 16 October, on the same day both courts are due to take up the issue. By this evening we had seen no new figures from the Chief Electoral Officer on the names marked absent, shifted, dead or duplicate.

At the Samakhya Business Summit at HITEX, Revanth Reddy repeated his targets of a $1-trillion economy by 2034 and $3 trillion by 2047, and said he wants to raise Telangana's share of India's GDP from 5 to 10 per cent, Siasat (PTI) and Andhra Jyothy reported. He urged young people to found companies rather than serve them, and said states must help Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2047 goal. Andhra Jyothy reported him saying politics is for election time, not for development. PTI reported he said no major policies had been scrapped, including useful BRS-era ones.

That message met an awkward report. Namasthe Telangana and Vaartha reported that the Union Road Transport Ministry has not sent the northern Regional Ring Road to the Union Cabinet, because of complaints about large land purchases made while the alignment was being fixed. Both papers relied on unnamed sources. Vaartha said bids for the 161.5 km road from Girmapur in Sangareddy to Thangadpally in Yadadri have been put off month by month, now to 22 October, though about 90 per cent of the land has been acquired. Namasthe Telangana is seen as close to the BRS. We found no on-record comment from the Centre or the state.

In the coal belt, the BRS's Singareni Karmika Garjana in Godavarikhani was set for this evening. As we publish, we had not seen a report of what KT Rama Rao told the crowd, so we will carry his speech, and any reply from the government, in the morning.

At Uppal, India won the toss and chose to bowl in the fourth T20 against the West Indies, unchanged from the last match, ThePrint (PTI) and V6 Velugu reported. India lead the five-match series 2-1. By evening, the reports we read still carried no response from the Hyderabad Cricket Association to the arrest of one of its members in the ticket case. We also found no new step on Hyderabad's water since the Chief Secretary's appeal.