Everyone wishes that sports us above politics and the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) seems to believe in it, of course, in a different context.
The HCA is vertically divided and the two groups – one led by its president Mohd Azharuddin and the other by the rest of the office bearers – fought each other so bitterly that they did not mind washing their dirty linen in public. Azhar removed his rivals from the panel and the other group removed Azhar, but there seems to be a tacit truce between the warring groups of late, particularly during the selection of players to represent the HCA in the Under 19 national level tournaments.
Amidst allegations that other factors than mere merit played a vital role in selections and against the backdrop of the warring groups trading charges of corruption earlier, the smooth selection process, which concluded a few days ago, raised many an eyebrow. Both the president and the secretary, leaving aside politics, ‘successfully’ completed the selection.
The secretary’s group seems to be in no mood to pursue the fight against Azhar despite strong ammunition in the form of the recent Telangana High Court order. As sports lovers are familiar with ‘hand of God’, the intervention of a politician of a powerful family, according to the grapevine, ensured truce. And, here too, a powerful TRS politician left her politics aside and helped Azharuddin, a Congress leader, and his ‘behind-the-screen’ supporter G. Vivek, who belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Evil eye haunts aged ex-AP judge
The jinx o former judge Kanagaraj seems to be neverending. The septuagenarian was in the news some time ago when the Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy government hurriedly appointed him as state election commissioner to settle scores with then incumbent N. Ramesh Kumar. The matter went up to the Supreme Court which finally settled it by removing Justice Kanagaraj and restoring Ramesh Kumar.
A year or so later, the government appointed Justice Kanagaraj as chairman of the state police complaints authority, relaxing rules framed by it. The rules say the maximum permissible age for the post of chairman is 65 years but the government appointed 78-year-old Kanagaraj and needless to say the matter landed in the AP High Court which suspended his appointment.
The episode once again left the legal luminary in an awkward position besides exposing the “sab chalta hai” attitude of the most influential bureaucrat in the Chief Minister’s Office. “We will, for sure, find another person to head the authority but we relaxed rules to compensate Kanagaraj which obviously came under the legal scrutiny,” sources said adding that it was high time the babudom got rid of “we-can-do-anything-we-want” attitude.
Amit Shah’s veiled hint about delayed polls?
Faux pas committed by top political leaders cause a lot of confusion among people in general and party leaders and cadres in particular. Sometimes, it could be a Freudian slip, giving an indicator of future decisions. There were at least two such instances when Union home minister Amit Shah addressed the Nirmal meeting on September 17. Shah said the BJP would win the elections and come to power in the 2024 elections in Telangana and the party would win all the 17 Lok Sabha seats in the general elections. This statement went viral on social media and people started interpreting it differently, and the date — 2024 elections — became a subject for serious discussion among political and journalist circles.
The Telangana Assembly elections are scheduled for 2023. Was it a slip of tongue? Was he dropping a hint that one-nation-one-election would be implemented, and the state and general elections would be held in 2024? And then there was another, when he mentioned a ‘Bandi Sanjay Kumar government’. Shape of things to come? Watch this space.
