Rahul Gandhi appoints Azharuddin as Telangana Congress working president

New Delhi: Former Congress MP Mohammed Azharuddin was Friday appointed working president of the party in Telangana days ahead of assembly elections in the southern state.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi also cleared some fresh appointments in the Telangana Pradesh Congress, approving the names of two vice presidents - B M Vinod Kumar and Jaffer Javed, eight new general secretaries and four secretaries in the state unit.

"Congress president Rahul Gandhi has approved the appointment of Mohammed Azharuddin, ex-MP, as working president of the Telanagana Pradesh Congress Committee," a statement from AICC general secretary Ashok Gehlot said.

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, who hails from Hyderabad, is seeking to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Secunderabad constituency in Telangana. Telangana goes to polls on December 7 and the Congress has forged an alliance with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in the state to oust the K Chandrasekhar Rao-led Government of Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS).

The Congress chief also appointed former Delhi MP Sandeep Dikshit as Secretary of AICC and attached him to the AICC Civic and Social Outreach Congress.

Dikshit is the son of former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit and has been an MP from the Delhi East constituency earlier. The party chief also appointed Lingaraju as president of Karnataka Pradesh Fishermen Congress.

Among those appointed new general secretaries of Telanagana Pradesh Congress are Jagadeeshwara Rao, Nagesh Mudiraj, T Narsa Reddy, Manavatha Roy, Faheem, Kailash, Laxma Reddy and Krishank. The new secretaries of TPCC are Durgam Bhaskar, Daruvu Ellanna, Vijay Kumar and Bala Laxmi.