Hyderabad: Congress’ Mohammad Azharuddin’s announcement expressing his interest on contesting from the Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituency in the ensuing general polls has created tremors in the party. Its meeting at Gandhi Bhavan on Monday witnessed high-decibel fireworks from the city Congress’ president M Anjan Kumar Yadav, who took serious objection to the wish expressed by Azharuddin. The meeting was organised in the presence of AICC secretary NS Bose Raju, TPCC chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy and other seniors
Opposing Azhar’ announcement, the Congress’ party’s city unit chief remarked,”If Azhar has any guts, he should contest only from the Hyderabad LS seat. Azharuddin must be mentally disturbed to make such an announcement that he was keen on Secunderabad LS seat. How can he stake a claim to the seat, which was represented by me earlier? I have been meeting people extensively in the Secunderabad constituency and have been organising various programmes to win over electors in the segment.”
An enraged Anjan, made it clear that he would not leave the Secunderabad seat, considering the groundwork, he had done for it. “Because of the hard work has done by me at grassroots level earlier, our party won the Secunderabad LS seat in 2004 and 2009 polls. Prior to my victory, the seat was considered as the bastion of BJP,” he added.
During the meeting, followers of Anjan raised slogans against Azharuddin. They made it clear that local Congress workers would not accept Azhar as the party candidate from Secunderabad seat.
The entire Gandhi Bhavan premises protested with “Azhar down” and “Anjan Zindabad” slogans. AICC secretary Bose Raju and TPCC president Uttam’s efforts to calm down the protesting Anjan’s supporters did not yield any results. Then, ex-Union Minister Sarve Satyanarayana silenced the agitating workers, saying that Secunderabad LS seat belonged to Anjan Kumar Yadav only.
Interestingly, even as there was a commotion in the party office, party veteran V Hanumantha Rao abruptly left the meeting hall, Former minister M Mukesh Goud and his son Vikram Goud had not attended the meeting. The duo’s absence strengthened the argument the father-son duo were leaning towards TRS.