Telangana Rural Local Body polls schedule released; over 1.67 crore voters to decide fate of contestants

The Telangana State Election Commission has announced the schedule for the elections to rural local bodies on Monday (September 29, 2025) ending the suspense on the conduct of the polls.

Polls in five phases

The elections will be held in five phases in 31 districts for 565 ZPTC; 5,749 MPTC; 12,733 sarpanches and 1.12 lakh wards in the gram panchayats .

Beginning of election process

The election process will start with the issuance of the first notification on October 9 and elections will be held in five phases – ZPTC and MPTC polls in two phases on October 23 and 27 and elections for gram panchayats in three phases October 30, November 4 and November 8.

Counting

Counting of the votes cast for the ZPTC and MPTC polls will be held on November 11 and results will be announced the same day bringing the election process to a close.

MCC in effect immediately

The State Election Commissioner Rani Kumudini who announced the schedule said the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) in the poll bound 31 districts would come into effect immediately.

More women voters

Over 1.67 crore – 81.65 lakh male and 85.36 lakh female – voters would decide the fate of the contesting candidates in the elections. Elections for the sarpanch posts are non political without involvement of symbols of the political parties while those for the ZPTC and MPTC posts would be fought on party basis.

Releasing the schedule, Ms. Kumudini said the elections would be conducted over a period of one month between October 9 and November 11. The first notification would be issued on October 9 for the ZPTC, MPTC polls and filing of nominations would start the same day. The process would conclude on November 11 when the votes cast for the ZPTC and MPTC polls would be counted and results declared on the same day.

The election authority had embarked upon the process duly following the guidelines issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI). The electors data was prepared based on the summary special revision of electoral rolls conducted by the ECI in July from ward level to district level. Objections and remarks were called for before publishing the final electoral rolls on September 10 and the gazette notification for the vacancies was issued subsequently.

Steps had been initiated to set up polling stations in different villages to avoid inconvenience to voters. Accordingly, 31,300 polling stations spread over 15,302 locations would be set up for ZPTC and MPTC polls and 1.12 lakh polling stations in 15,522 locations would be earmarked from the gram panchayat elections.

Polling would be conducted through ballot boxes and ballot papers and the TGSEC borrowed ballot boxes from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to meet the requirements. Elections were however not being held for 14 MPTC posts, 27 gram panchayats and 246 wards in view of the stay granted by the court.