The state Cabinet, on August 30, however, approved the names of Prof. Kodandaram and Azharuddin, and recommended to the Governor to nominate them to Legislative Council.
Hyderabad: The Congress government’s nominees for the Governor quota Legislative Council sets – Prof. M. Kodandaram and former Congress MP Mohammed Azharuddin – may have to wait longer to enter the Upper House with Raj Bhavan, once bitten twice shy, deciding to put on hold their nomination.
More than political reasons, the pending case in the Supreme Court against the previous appointment by the BRS government, and the doubts over whether the state government had violated the apex court’s latest order by replacing Amer Ali Khan, a journalist, with former cricketer Azharuddin, former MP, could have forced the Governor to adopt the wait and watch policy, according to official sources.
The Supreme Court in its interim order on August 14 gave liberty to the state Cabinet to recommend the names of either the petitioners in the case (Dr Dasoju Sravan and Kurra Satyanarayana of the BRS) or the respondents (Prof. Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan). It also gave liberty to the Governor to nominate the candidates recommended by the Cabinet. It, however, laid down a rider that the nomination would be subject to the final outcome of the ongoing case.
The state Cabinet, on August 30, however, approved the names of Prof. Kodandaram and Azharuddin, and recommended to the Governor to nominate them to Legislative Council. The Cabinet was acting on the August 14 order of the Supreme Court “suspending and keeping in abeyance” the earlier appointment of Prof. Kodandaram and Amer Ali Khan, editor of a city-based Urdu daily.
In a strategic move, however, the Congress replaced Amer Ali Khan with Azharuddin, a strong contender for the Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency in the ensuing bypoll, to facilitate selecting V. Naveen Yadav as the party candidate.
Official sources told Deccan Chronicle that Governor Jishnu Dev Varma was in no mood to take a call on the issue till the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in the ongoing case, though the apex court had given liberty to both the Cabinet and the Governor to take a decision on the matter but with a rider.
There were doubts over the recommendation of Azharuddin as he not had only served as MP of a political party for a term (Moradabad, Congress), he had also made unsuccessful attempts to enter the Lok Sabha and the Telangana Assembly as the Congress’ official candidate. Then Governor Tamilsai Soundararajan had rejected the previous K. Chandrashekar Rao government’s recommendation of Dr Sravan and Satyanarayana primarily on the grounds that they both were political activists. The Governor usually nominates persons from the fields of literature, science, arts and social service to the Legislative Council.
“The issue of credentials will come at a later stage. The Governor doesn’t want to act in haste and may wait for the final verdict,” Raj Bhavan sources pointed out.
