Telugu stars try to enter Lok Sabha from UP

Two Telugu stars, one from cinema and the other from cricket, Jaya Prada of the Samajwadi Party from Rampur and  Mohammed Azharuddin from Moradabad are trying luck to get an entry into Parliament, not from their home state of Andhra Pradesh but far away in Uttar Pradesh.

Former Indian cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin, banned from cricket, will contest from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh as a Congress candidate for the Lok Sabha elections.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, who roped him in the Congress early this month, could not get him the ticket from the home ground of Hyderabad to which he belongs. Moradabad has a very large Muslim population and as such the seat is seen as a safe bet for a Muslim. The sitting member from the constituency is Shafiqur Rahman Barq of Samajwadi Party.

Azharuddin figures in the list of 14 more candidates from Uttar Pradesh announced by the Congress on Friday and among them are half a dozen rebels of other parties, including Ramesh Dube and Suryamani Tiwari who defected from the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party last week.

The party had earlier declared 26 candidates from the state after its alliance with the Samajwadi Party collapsed.

The 66-year old Dube will seek re-election from Mirzapur that he won on the BSP ticket in a 2007 byelection while Tiwari, who was selected and then dropped by BSP for Bhadohi, will contest the seat now on the Congress ticket.

Basically a Mumbaikar who has been Mumbai corporator and a Congress MLA in Maharashtra for a decade as well as a Maharashtra minister, Dube had shifted to UP and joined BSP only in 2007 to become a MP.He has also been a founder member of Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party.

Azharuddin's name was also figuring to contest from one of the seats from Rajasthan which is seen as a Congress stronghold since after the party captured power from the Bharatiya Janata Party last year.

One of India's most successful cricketers, Azharuddin's innings came to an abrupt end a decade ago, after a Disciplinary Committee' of the Board for Control of Cricket in India imposed a life ban on him in December 2000. Azharuddin had challenged the ban in court, but the case is still dragging on. He now runs a successful event management firm, along with a health club called 'Est'.