Hyderabad: Former Indian cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin was nominated as a Member of the Telangana Legislative Council (MLC) under the Governor’s quota by the state Cabinet, a decision he described as leaving him “deeply honoured and humbled.” The announcement was made on Saturday at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, and Azharuddin expressed gratitude to Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, party leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, K.C. Venugopal, as well as Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, TPCC president Mahesh Kumar Goud, and AICC in-charge Meenakshi Natrajan for their support and guidance. Azharuddin pledged to serve the state with integrity and dedication.
The Cabinet also resolved to nominate academic activist M. Kodandaram as MLC under the Governor’s quota. Both nominations will be recommended to Governor Jishnu Dev Varma for formal appointment. This follows a Supreme Court order two weeks earlier that stayed the previous appointments of Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan, who had been sworn in as MLCs about a year earlier. Azharuddin’s nomination was notable as the Congress party had reportedly considered him a likely candidate for the upcoming Jubilee Hills Assembly seat by-election, necessitated by the death of BRS MLA Maganti Gopinath on June 8. Gopinath defeated Azharuddin by over 16,000 votes in the 2023 Assembly elections.
While Azharuddin had expressed his willingness to contest the Jubilee Hills by-election, the party leadership had not finalized its candidate. His immediate move to the Upper House shifts him out of direct electoral contention, at least for now.
Azharuddin, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad in 2009 after joining the Congress, later contested unsuccessfully from Rajasthan’s Tonk-Sawai Madhopur in 2014. He was appointed working president of the Telangana Congress in 2018 and has since focused on strengthening the party in the state, though he has not been fielded in either Assembly or Lok Sabha elections since then.
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