Azhar begins new innings as TPCC working president

​Hyderabad/New Delhi: Cricketer-turned-politician and former Congress MP Mohammad Azharuddin was on Friday appointed working president of the party in Telangana days ahead of the Assembly elections in the state.  Congress president Rahul Gandhi also cleared some fresh appointments in the Telangana Pradesh Congress, approving the names of two vice presidents - Vinod Kumar and Jaffer Javed, eight new general secretaries and four secretaries in the state unit.     

Azharuddin was a former captain of the Indian cricket team. His cricket career came to an abrupt end when he was implicated in the infamous match-fixing scandal in 2000 and was banned by the BCCI for life. However, the Andhra Pradesh High Court in 2012 declared the life ban on him as illegal.  Azharuddin was an MP from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh in 2009, after he joined the Congress in the same year. 

He again unsuccessfully contested the 2014 election from Rajasthan's Tonk-Sawai Madhopur constituency in 2014. The former cricketer is seeking to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Secunderabad constituency in Telangana.