In another jolt to the Congress leadership, senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad who served the party in various capacities, including as Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, on Friday ended his five-decade association with the grand old party, terming it “comprehensively destroyed” and lashing out at former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi for “demolishing” its entire consultative mechanism.
Azad wrote a five-page no- holds-barred letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, describing her as a “nominal figurehead” and alleging that all important decisions are being taken by Rahul or rather worse “his security guards and PAs”.
The Congress called Azad’s resignation “unfortunate” and termed the timing “awful”, saying it has come at a time when the party is engaged in combating the BJP on various issues.
“Azad was a senior leader of the Congress. It is saddening that when the party fighting against inflation and polarisation, he decided to quit. It is most unfortunate and regrettable that this has happened when the entire organisation is engaged in combating the BJP on issues of price rise and unemployment,” the Congress said.
Azad, whose resignation from all positions in the party, including its primary membership, comes ahead of crucial organisational elections, accused the leadership of committing a “giant fraud” on the party in the name of “farce and sham” internal polls. He said no such exercise had taken place at any level and lists are being prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC.
Before Azad, several senior leaders like Kapil Sibal, Hardik Patel, Sushmita Dev, Jiten Prasada, RPN Singh too resigned from the party in the recent past.
Jyotiraditya Scindia, who helped the Congress to return to power in Madhya Pradesh in 2018, resigned in March last year, paving the way for the return of the BJP Government in the State.
Only last week another veteran Congress leader Anand Sharma resigned from the chairmanship of the party’s steering committee for poll-bound Himachal Pradesh.
Hours after Azad quit the Congress, five senior party leaders, including two former Ministers in Jammu & Kashmir resigned the party’s basic membership with sources saying more are likely go.
Former ministers RS Chib and GM Saroori, former MLA Mohammad Amin Bhat, former MLC Naresh Gupta, and party leader Salman Nizami resigned in support of Azad.
They said five more leaders are likely to quit including former MP Jugal Kishore Sharma and ex-legislators Haji Abdul Rashid, Chowdhary Mohd Akram and Gulzar Ahmad Wani. Another prominent leader, Muneer Ahmad Mir, is also likely to resign, the sources said.
The majority of the senior leaders who have quit the Congress have slammed Rahul and his style of functioning and the coterie culture prevailing in the Congress. In his scathing criticism of the leadership, particularly Rahul, the 73-year-old termed the former Congress chief a “non-serious individual at the helm”. Proxies, Azad wrote to Sonia, are being propped to take over the leadership and they will be nothing more than “a puppet on a string”.
“This all happened because the leadership in the past eight years has tried to foist a non-serious individual at the helm of the party,” he alleged.
“It is therefore with great regret and an extremely leaden heart that I have decided to sever my half-a century-old association with the Indian National Congress and hereby resign from all party positions including the primary membership of the Indian National Congress,” Azad said.
Terming the entire organisational election process a “farce and a sham”, he said at no place anywhere in the country have elections been held at any level of the organisation. “Handpicked lieutenants of the AICC have been coerced to sign on lists prepared by the coterie than runs the AICC sitting in 24, Akbar Road. At no place in a booth, block, district or state was an electoral roll published,” he said. “The AICC leadership is squarely responsible for perpetrating a giant fraud on the party to perpetuate its hold on the ruins of what once was a national movement that fought for and attained the Independence of India,” Azad told Sonia.
“Does the Indian National Congress deserve this in the 75th year of India’s independence is a question that the AICC leadership must ask itself,” he said. In his view, “the Indian National Congress has lost both the will and the ability under the tutelage of the coterie that runs the AICC to fight for what is right for India”.
In fact, before starting the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the leadership should have undertaken a ‘Congress jodo’ exercise across the country, he said. “Unfortunately, the situation in the Congress has reached such a point of no return that now ‘proxies’ are being propped up to take over the leadership of the party. Referring to the letter written by him and 22 other leaders in August 2020 to flag the “abysmal drift” in the party, Azad said, “the coterie chose to unleash its sycophants on us and got us attacked, vilified, and humiliated in the crudest manner possible”. He alleged that on the directions of the coterie that runs the AICC today, “my mock funeral procession was taken out in Jammu”.
Instead of taking those views on board in a constructive and cooperative manner, “we were abused, humiliated, insulted and vilified in a specially summoned meeting of the extended CWC meeting”, he said.
A member of the G-23 group that sought a change in the Congress, Azad told Sonia the party had “lost both the will and ability under the tutelage of the coterie” running the affairs of the party to fight for what is right for India. All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and the new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party,” he alleged. Azad said the Congress at the national level has conceded political space available to the BJP and State-level space to regional parties. On their part, Congress leaders said Azad’s observations in the letter were more of a “personal vilification, targeting Rahul. “A man who has been treated with the greatest respect by the Congress leadership has betrayed it by his vicious personal attacks which reveals his true character, Congress chief spokesperson Ramesh tweeted, adding that “GNA’s DNA has been Modi-fied,” said Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh.
Ramesh also questioned the contents of the letter written by Azad. “First Modi’s tears in Parliament, then Padma Vibhushan, then the extension for residence. Ye sanyog nahi sahyog hai (It’s not a coincidence, it’s a collaboration),” Ramesh said in a tweet in Hindi.
One of the probable candidates for the new Congress chief, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot took a dig at Azad and said it is not right for people whose very identity is due to the party to say such things. Gehlot said no one had expected that someone who was never kept without an office by the Congress for 42 years would say such things about the party.
