Hyderabad: Former Indian cricket team captain Mohammed Azharuddin, the Congress candidate in Telangana’s Jubilee Hills constituency, was defeated by 16,337 votes after getting an early lead against sitting MLA and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader Maganti Gopinath.
Other candidates in the fray include Deepak Reddy of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s (AIMIM’s) Rashed Farazuddin, trailing in third and fourth place, respectively.
With a total of 3,75,452 registered voters, according to the EC, the constituency recorded a voting percentage of 44.20 percent Thursday.
Azharuddin is making his debut in the assembly poll arena from his home turf, Hyderabad. He had previously been elected as the Moradabad (Uttar Pradesh) Lok Sabha MP in 2009 and was defeated in Tonk-Sawai Madhopur (Rajasthan) in 2014, both times representing the Congress.
Although he was expected to contest in the 2018 assembly polls, the party kept him in reserve, making him a Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) working president. The cricketer-turned-politician is on the poll pitch after about a decade.
Jubilee Hills is one of the seven assembly segments in the Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituency. It comprises the Erragadda, Borabanda, Yousufguda, Srinagar Colony and Shaikpet areas. Its neighbourhoods range from slums and lower middle-class settlements to posh areas inhabited by some of Telangana’s richest.
Sitting MLA Maganti was elected from the Telugu Desam Party in 2014 and later defected to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS, now BRS). In 2018, he won as a TRS candidate, defeating his nearest rival, the Congress’s P. Vishnuvardhan Reddy, by over 16,000 votes.
Political parties estimate the Muslim vote in the constituency at over 1 lakh. The Borabanda and Shaikpet areas have a high proportion of Muslims.
The AIMIM has also fielded a candidate here this time, making the contest four-cornered. Speaking to ThePrint, Azharuddin had alleged that the AIMIM’s foray here was intended to cut into the Muslim votes to benefit its ally, the BRS.
Also read: Azharuddin pads up for polls as Congress candidate in home turf Hyderabad — ‘will win this match’