Has the Telangana Cabinet Nominated Azharuddin and Kodandaram as MLCs?

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

The meeting was led by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, who agreed to recommend their names to Governor Jishnu Dev Varma for the MLC nominations.

This initiative comes in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent ruling that put a hold on the appointments of Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan as MLCs under the same quota.

Both Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan had already been sworn in as MLCs approximately a year ago.

Interestingly, Azharuddin's nomination was unexpected, as the ruling Congress party was considering him as a candidate for the impending by-election in the Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency.

The necessity for this by-election arose following the passing of sitting MLA Maganti Gopinath from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS). Gopinath, who had previously defeated Azharuddin by over 16,000 votes in the 2023 elections, died due to cardiac arrest on June 8.

As the Working President of the state Congress, Azharuddin had expressed his intention to contest the by-election.

However, Mahesh Kumar Goud, the State Congress President, mentioned that the party had yet to finalize its candidate.

After joining the Congress party, Azharuddin was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Moradabad constituency in Uttar Pradesh in 2009. He was also fielded by the Congress from Rajasthan’s Ton-Sawai Madhopur in 2014 but did not succeed.

In 2018, he took on the role of Working President for the Telangana Congress and campaigned during the 2018 Assembly elections. However, he was not nominated for either the Assembly or Lok Sabha polls. In the 2023 elections, he was named the Congress candidate for Jubilee Hills but was defeated by Gopinath.

The Supreme Court issued a stay on the appointments of Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan on August 13, following a petition filed by BRS leaders Dasoju Sravan and Kurra Satyanarayana contesting the state government’s nominations.

The petitioners argued that these appointments went against interim orders set by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court noted that swearing-in post-interim orders was inappropriate and clarified that any nominations under the Governor’s quota would be contingent on the ongoing legal proceedings.

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

Both individuals were initially nominated to the Council under the Governor’s quota after the State Cabinet re-sent the recommendation in early August last year.

Though they were sworn in as MLCs in January 2024, the High Court annulled the nomination in March due to petitions from Dasoju Sravan and Kurra Satyanarayana, whose nominations had been suggested by the previous BRS government in July 2023 but were rejected by then-Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan on the grounds that they were 'politically aligned persons.'

The High Court overturned the Governor’s decision, stating that the Governor could only return the government’s recommendation for reconsideration.

Post the High Court ruling, BRS leaders requested the Governor to nominate them as MLCs. However, with the BRS losing power to Congress, the Governor denied the request.

Sravan and Satyanarayana challenged the Governor’s refusal in the Supreme Court. While the High Court did not direct the Governor to nominate them, they sought the apex court's intervention to compel the Governor to appoint them. The Supreme Court refrained from issuing any directives but cautioned that if the state and Governor proceeded with appointing Congress candidates during this interim, those appointments would be subject to the legal outcomes.

On August 1, 2024, the State Cabinet once again recommended that Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan be nominated as MLCs under the Governor’s quota.

They were sworn in after the Supreme Court suspended the operation of the Telangana High Court judgment that had annulled the then-Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan's decision to reject the BRS leaders' nominations as MLCs.