Azharuddin appointed working president of Telangana Congress
Former Indian cricket captain and ex-member of Parliament MohammadAzharuddin was on Friday appointed working president of the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee following reports that he was upset at being sidelined in the poll campaign and contemplating joining the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).
According to All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Ashok Gehlot, party chief RahulGandhiapprovedthe appointment of Azharuddin, 55. The Telangana unit of the party already has three working presidents: former MP Ponnam Prabhakar, former member of the legislative assembly Anumula Revanth Reddy and senior leader Jetti Kusuma Kumar.
Along with Azhar’s appointment, the AICC named two vicepresidents, BM Vinod Kumar and Jaffer Javed; eight general secretaries, S Jagadeeshwar Rao, Nagesh Mudiraj, T Narsa Reddy, Manavatha Roy, Mohammed Faheem , N Kailash, Lakshma Reddy and M Krishank; and four secretaries, Durgam Bhaskar, Daruvu Ellanna, Vijaya Kumar and Balalakshmi (who doesn’t use initials or a second name).
Azharuddin, who captained the Indian cricket team in the 1990s, skipped the public meeting addressed by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi in Medchal on the outskirts of Hyderabad on November 23 although his name was on a list of invitees to be seated on the dais.
Azharuddin had reportedly been upset over not being consulted by the party high command or the local party unit in either the selection of candidates for the December 7 Telangana elections or working out campaign strategies. People close to him said on condition of anonymity that Azharuddin had also been unhappy with the way the Congress had treated Muslim aspirants in candidate selection; out of the 99 seats it is contesting, it has fielded only seven Muslims.
At the same time, Azharuddin conveyed to the high command that he was interested in contesting the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Secunderabad. He had earlier represented Moradabad Lok Sabha constituency in UP that he won in 2009, but lost election from the Tonk-Sawai Madhopur constituency in Rajasthan in 2014.
The high command did not respond positively to his request to contest Secunderabad in the LokSabhaelections; formerMP P Anjan Kumar Yadav, who represented this constituency twice in the past, insisted that he would contest election to the same seat again in 2019. He even threatened to walk out of the Congress if Azharuddin was preferred over him for the Secunderabad seat.
The high command placated Yadav by appointing him president of the Greater Hyderabad Congress Committee and giving a ticket to his son Anil Kumar Yadav to contest the assembly election from Musheerabad.
Apparently realising that he was being sidelined, Azharuddin is understood to have decided to join the TRS. In fact, his close friend – Abid Rasool Khan, ex-president of the state minorities commission – quit the party and joined the TRS. The Congress high command swung into action to placate the former cricketer. A few hours before Sonia Gandhi’s public meeting in Hyderabad last week, senior Congress MP Ahmed Patel, along with former minister Mohammad Shabbir Ali, went to pacify him. They assured him that he would be given due importance and his interests would be taken care of.
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