Telangana is gearing up to vote in the first elections held specifically for the state, and it seems set to go down as a battle royale for the seat of power in Hyderabad. The TRS will do its best to hold on to power in the state it helped create. Its opponents - most of them - have banded together in an unprecedented alliance to bring the TRS down.
Here is 10-point guide to the 2018 Telangana Assembly elections:
1. This is the first election that is being held specifically for the state of Telangana. The last Assembly elections in 2014 had been conducted in undivided Andhra Pradesh. The state had been bifurcated after the election. The 2014 Assembly elections had been held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections.
2. This election has been necessitated by TRS leader and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's decision to dissolve the Assembly early, eight months before its term was due to expire.
3. All 119 seats of the Telangana Assembly go to the polls in a single phase on December 7. The counting of votes is set to be held on December 11, along with the four other states that have gone to the ballot in this election season - Mizoram, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.
4. The Congress, which had ruled the undivided state, had practically been wiped out in both Telangana and the new state of Andhra Pradesh. It is now the senior partner in the 'Mahakatumi', which translates to 'Grand Alliance'.
5. The Congress alliance consists of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and the Communist Party of India (CPI). Congress will contest in 94 seats, TDP in 13, TJS in 8 and CPI in 3.
6. This is the first time ever that the Congress and TDP find themselves as allies. The TDP was founded on 1983 on the platform of Telugu pride, particularly revolving around the roughshod treatment of local Congress leaders by the party high command in Delhi.
7. The unlikely bedfellows are part of ongoing efforts by a multitude of opposition parties across the country to cobble together a viable alliance to take on the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The Congress-TDP truck has been made possible only because Andhra Pradesh is not facing elections at the moment, since that might have ended up pitting the two parties against each other.
8. There are other parties that could have a bearing on the results. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has the sway to affect results in a number of seats in and around Hyderabad, which have significant concentrations of Muslims. The party is contesting in eight seats. There is also another alliance, the Bahujan Left Front, which is a coming together of many Leftist organisations and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
9. The BJP is too is fighting these elections, fielding candidates in all constituencies. It remains to be seen if the party has the ability to win any seats on its own, or whether its pockets of support could upset the result of one side or the other.
10. Pre-poll surveys indicate that anti-incumbency sentiments could eat into the TRS chances of victory, with some surveys even giving the Congress-led alliance an outright win.