Morning Pulse: Voter camps, a water warning and a coal-belt rally ask Telangana to turn up

Telangana's Wednesday comes with a request to show up. The election machinery wants people at their polling stations to save their place on the voter roll. The Chief Secretary wants Hyderabad to go easier on the tap in a dry year. The BRS wants coal workers in Godavarikhani this evening. And the city's cricket crowd heads to Uppal tonight, a day after police said some of the match's free tickets had been sold on the side.

The voter roll comes first. Chief Electoral Officer C Sudharsan Reddy has told the Hyderabad district election officer and every collector to hold special enrolment camps at all polling stations on Thursday and Friday, 15 and 16 October, Telangana Today and Andhra Jyothy reported. People missing from the draft roll and first-time voters can file Form 6 there, with booth-level officers and party booth agents on hand to help. The final roll is due on 9 November.

The camps arrive as the deadline closes in. Telangana Today reported late on Tuesday that about 14 lakh electors were still under scrutiny. It quoted the CEO as saying that anyone who does not answer an SIR notice by 5 November will be classed as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate, and dropped. By the paper's count, about 73 lakh names already sit in that category, out of 3.38 crore before the revision. Officials have still not said how many of those are deaths, duplicates or people who moved, a gap we flagged last night. The camps at least give anyone wrongly left out a practical second chance. Whether people actually turn up will test how far the fear of mass exclusion, which took much of the Cabinet to Delhi this week, has reached the booths.

A second roll is being built from scratch. In a memo, the CEO told officers not to reject Form-18 applications from graduates only because the voter ID (EPIC) number is missing, both papers reported. Andhra Jyothy said the memo followed complaints that forms were being turned away for exactly that reason. The enrolment is for the Mahabubnagar-Ranga Reddy-Hyderabad and Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda graduates' seats in the Legislative Council. Telangana Today reported that these elections are due in March 2027, that every graduate must apply afresh, and that applications close on 6 November.

Then there is water. At a review on Tuesday, Chief Secretary Sanjay Jaju appealed to Hyderabad residents to conserve water, saying El Niño had cut what the reservoirs hold, Telangana Today and Andhra Jyothy reported. The core city now gets 560 million gallons a day from Osman Sagar, Himayat Sagar, Manjeera, Krishna and Godavari sources. Telangana Today added that an extra 20 MGD will be drawn from Mallannasagar from November, when a pipeline is due, and that Jaju ordered a stop to water-board drinking water being used to wash vehicles. There is an irony the BRS will not miss. Mallannasagar is part of the Kaleshwaram project, which the Congress opposed building when it was in opposition, the paper noted.

The coal belt is the evening's political stage. KT Rama Rao is chief guest at the BRS's Singareni Karmika Garjana in Godavarikhani, the rally we flagged last night. Telangana Today reported that former government whip Balka Suman accused the Congress of weakening Singareni Collieries, and that Karimnagar MLA Gangula Kamalakar said supporters would travel in a procession of 300 vehicles. Workers are expected from Peddapalli, Mancherial, Karimnagar, Jayashankar Bhupalpally and Jagtial. The rally follows Tuesday's announcement of a Rs 1,53,912 Dasara bonus per permanent worker, about a fifth less than last year.

Cricket has brought its own controversy. Goshamahal police arrested four people, among them Hyderabad Cricket Association member Satish Chandra Srivastava and his son, accusing them of selling complimentary tickets for tonight's fourth India-West Indies T20 at inflated prices through WhatsApp and Instagram, Telangana Today and V6 Velugu reported. Police said they seized 11 complimentary tickets, cash and phones, and Telangana Today said the four were remanded to judicial custody. These are police allegations. We found no response from the accused or the HCA. Hyderabad Metro will run until midnight from the Uppal Stadium and NGRI stations, Andhra Jyothy reported.

Some of last night's loops are still open. By this morning we found no reply from the state or the Railways to the BRS on the Bahadurguda land and the bullet-train alignment, no government answer on the NACOF hostel-supply tender, and no report of the outcome of the ED's plea in the Jagan cases.