Telangana votes for a new government on November 30, with results due December 3.
Violent clashes broke out in Telangana Thursday after party workers from the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi and opposition Congress fought with each other as their respective candidates for the Ibrahimpatnam seat led rallies prior to filing papers for the November 30 Assembly election.
Visuals shared by news agency ANI showed rival mobs - potentially hundreds each side - facing each other down waving the pink of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's BRS and the Congress flag.
The video also showed a police officer ducking for cover as he runs past a Toyota Innova that seems to have been vandalised; the rear window was smashed in, most likely by a stone.
The video - over three minutes long - swept up and down a main road and showed an army of BRS and Congress cadre, surrounding slow-moving campaign vehicles, and being marshalled by cops.
Both sides threw stones at each other and cops had to resort to some force to disperse the crowd.
Today's violence adds to steadily increasing tension in the southern state ahead of the election, as the opposition BJP and Congress parties up the ante against the BRS of the Chief Minister, or KCR.
This week Prime Minister Narendra Modi was active in the state - an indication of how badly the BJP wants to breach Telangana (and South India). He called the BRS government "anti-Backward Class" and lumped it with the Congress, declaring both guilty of nepotism, corruption and appeasement.
READ | Need To Throw Out KCR's "Anti-Backward Class" Government: PM Modi
Underlining the fragmented nature of this Telangana election, the Congress' Rahul Gandhi also took pot-shots at the BRS, declaring it the BJP's "B-team" - a now-standard swipe by political parties.
"BRS is Telangana people's 'A-team'... nobody's B team," Telangana Minister KT Rama Rao hit back.
READ | KCR's Party In Telangana's "A" Team, Not "B" Team Of Any Party: KTR
Meanwhile, in a separate campaign-related incident, Mr Rama Rao, who is also the Chief Minister's son, almost fell off a moving vehicle during a rally in Armoor in Nizamabad district.
A video circulated online shows him standing on top of a platform as the vehicle speeds along a narrow street. At one point it stops abruptly, and the platform collapses, pitching him forward.
Also, earlier today KCR filed papers for two seats - Kamareddy and Gajwel. From the first he faces the Congress' state boss - Revanth Reddy - and from the second, the BJP's Eatala Rajender.
Telangana - which has been ruled by the BRS since its formation in 2014 - votes at the end of the month in a single phase. Results will be out on December 3, with those from Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Mizoram, which completed voting on November 7.
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