Ex-Cong MP joins Azharuddin in staking claim to Sec'bad seat

Former Congress MP M Anjan Kumar Yadav today said he was keen on contesting from Secunderabad, represented by him earlier, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, a day after former cricketer and party colleague Mohammad Azharuddin expressed his wish to test his luck from the city seat.

"He (Azharuddin) is thinking that. (Congress) high command has not told him (about candidature)... If PCC president, high command say that Azharuddin is the candidate, then it is counted," Yadav, President of Congress' Hyderabad unit, told PTI here.

Asked if he had intimated (the party) about his wish to contest from Secunderabad, Yadav said party activists have communicated, a reference to his supporters raising slogans (backing his candidature) at a party meeting held here today.

"I am going to contest (from Secunderabad)," he asserted.

Yadav had represented Secunderabad in Lok Sabha in 2004 and 2009, but missed a hat-trick when he lost to former union minister and senior BJP leader Bandaru Dattatreya in the 2014 polls.

After contesting the last two Lok Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, former India captain Azharuddin has expressed his keenness to fight the 2019 polls from Secunderabad in his home state Telangana.

He had won the Moradabad seat in Uttar Pradesh in 2009 but lost in 2014 from Tonk-Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan.

Azharuddin, however, has said the final decision from where he would contest in 2019 would be taken by the Congress high command.

Asked about Azharuddin's wish to contest from Secunderabad, BJP MLC N Ramachander Rao expressed confidence that his party would retain the seat whoever was the rival candidate.

"As an individual he (Azharuddin) has every right to contest from anywhere he wants. It is upto their party to decide who will be the candidate... But, one thing I can definitely say that BJP will retain the seat whoever may be the candidate," Rao said.