Telangana Cabinet decides to nominate Azharuddin, Kodandaram as MLCs

Hyderabad, Aug 30 The Telangana Cabinet on Saturday decided to nominate former Indian cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin and M. Kodandaram as Members of the Legislative Council (MLCs) under the Governor’s quota.

The Cabinet meeting, presided over by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy decided to recommend their names to Governor Jishnu Dev Varma for nomination as MLCs.

The move came two weeks after the Supreme Court stayed the appointment of Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan as MLCs under the Governor’s quota.

Both Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan were sworn in as MLCs about a year ago.

The decision to nominate Azharuddin came as a surprise, as the ruling Congress party was likely to field him as its candidate for the upcoming by-election to the Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency.

The by-election to the Jubilee Hills seat was necessitated by the death of sitting MLA Maganti Gopinath of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS). Gopinath, who had defeated his nearest rival, Azharuddin, by over 16,000 votes in 2023, died of cardiac arrest on June 8.

Azharuddin, who is the Working President of the state Congress, had stated that he would contest the by-election.

However, State Congress President Mahesh Kumar Goud had said that the party had not finalised the candidate.

Azharuddin was elected to the Lok Sabha from Moradabad constituency in Uttar Pradesh in 2009, a few months after he joined the Congress party. The Congress had fielded him from Rajasthan’s Ton-Sawai Madhopur in 2014, but he lost the election.

In 2018, he was appointed as the Working President of the Telangana Congress. He had campaigned for the party in the 2018 Assembly elections, but the party did not field him in either the Assembly or Lok Sabha polls. However, he was named as the Congress candidate from Jubilee Hills in the 2023 elections. In a multi-cornered contest, he lost to Gopinath of the BRS.

The Supreme Court on August 13 stayed the appointments of Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan as MLCs.

The apex court gave a stay on a petition filed by BRS leaders Dasoju Sravan and Kurra Satyanarayana, challenging the nominations made by the state government.

The petitioners had challenged the appointment on the ground that it violated interim orders of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court observed that swearing-in after the interim orders was improper and made it clear that any appointments made under the Governor’s quota would be subject to the outcome of the ongoing legal proceedings.

While Kodandaram is the president of Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS), Amer Ali Khan is the News Editor of the Urdu daily ‘Siasat’

Both Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan were nominated to the Council under the Governor’s quota after the State Cabinet again sent the recommendation to the Governor in early August last year.

They were nominated as MLCs in January 2024, but the High Court had set aside the nomination in March on the petitions by Dasoju Sravan and Kurra Satyanarayana, whose nomination as MLCs was recommended by the previous government of BRS in July 2023, but the same was rejected by then Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan on the grounds that the two were “politically aligned persons”.

The High Court had quashed the Governor’s decision, rejecting the nominations of Dasoju Sravan and Satyanarayana, and held that the Governor can only return the government’s recommendation for reconsideration.

Following the High Court order, the BRS leaders had requested the Governor to nominate them as MLCs. However, as the BRS had lost power to Congress, the Governor rejected the request.

Sravan and Satyanarayana had challenged the Governor’s refusal in the Supreme Court. As the High Court had not passed any orders to the Governor to nominate them, they pleaded with the apex court to give a direction to the Governor to appoint them. The Supreme Court declined to pass any orders but made it clear that if the state and the Governor proceed further with appointing Congress nominees in the two vacant slots in the meantime, such appointments would be subject to the outcome of the pleas.

The State Cabinet on August 1, 2024, decided to once again recommend the nomination of Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan as MLCs under the Governor’s quota.

They were sworn in after the Supreme Court stayed the operation of the Telangana High Court judgment quashing the decision of the then Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan to reject the nomination of BRS leaders as MLCs.

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