Azharuddin Refutes Reports Of His Joining TRS

Senior Congress leader, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) Working President, former MP and former cricketer Mohammad Azharuddin today refuted news reports that he was contemplating joining the ruling TRS.

He made it clear that he would continue in the Congress, and that there was no question of his joining the TRS.

Azharuddin responded on the issue through his Twitter account.

Separately, the Congress too dismissed reports that Azharuddin might join the TRS.

"Azharuddin spoke to me this morning and outrightly denied reports that appeared in a section of media about his likely exit from the Congress to join the TRS. Someone has misled the media on this issue," said TPCC Minorities Department Chairman Shaik Abdullah Sohail while addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan.

Sohail strongly condemned the TRS for spreading rumours targeting Congress leaders. He pointed out that a section of media had also been publishing stories on the likelihood of some Congress MLAs joining the TRS.

"Azhar has clearly stated that he will not quit the Congress. He told me that when he was the captain of the Indian cricket team there used to be some rough patches when team was losing matches continuously. But the entire team remained united to come out of such situations. In the same manner, Azharuddin has clearly stated that there was no question of his leaving the Congress just because it had lost the elections," he said.

The Congress leader said that it was strange that despite winning two Assembly elections since 2014 and ruling the state for one term, the TRS had failed to groom leadership of its own. The party still did not have faces that it could field as its candidates for the Secunderabad and the Hyderabad Parliamentary constituencies. It was therefore trying to lure Congress leaders to fill that vacuum, he said.

"The TRS is like a company that does not manufacture its own brand. It simply buys products of others and pastes its own sticker on them. Almost 50% of the leaders in the TRS are originally from the Congress. Two of three Rajya Sabha MPs of the TRS originally belonged to the Congress. The TRS government's flagship scheme Rythu Bandhu is being run by a Lok Sabha MP who was originally elected on a Congress ticket. Except for KCR's family, no other leader could prosper in the TRS, and so whenever the party needs good people, it resorts to poaching and horse trading," Sohail alleged.

Sohail said that the TRS had won the December Assembly elections through EVM manipulation and other irregularities. He said that since the party could not defeat the Congress on the field through genuine politics, KCR was using money power and other tactics to make some leaders from the Congress join his party.

"The Congress is like a factory that produces mass leaders. KCR might stay afloat for some time by poaching leaders from other parties, but ultimately it will be the Congress that will emerge winner," he said.

For the uninitiated, news reports have been doing the rounds of the political corridors of Telangana ever since Azharuddin met with Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao in Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi's daughter's wedding in the city.

It was reported that Owaisi, reputed to be a good friend of Azharuddin, had a word with KCR and told him that Azharuddin would join the TRS if he was fielded from the Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituency. The news reports also suggested that KCR had agreed to the proposal. The Congress is reportedly planning to field Azharuddin from the Malkajgiri constituency.