In five-page letter to Sonia Gandhi, veteran leader describes the Congress as ‘comprehensively destroyed’, and blames her son Rahul Gandhi for it
Ghulam Nabi Azad with Rahul Gandhi. File pic/PTI
Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday resigned from all party positions, including its primary membership, citing the “immaturity” of Rahul Gandhi whom he blamed for “demolishing the consultative mechanism” in the party. Delivering another blow to the embattled party that has seen a series of high profile exits, including that of Kapil Sibal and Ashwani Kumar, in the recent past, Azad wrote that the 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.
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In his five-page no-holds-barred letter to party president Sonia Gandhi, Azad said the Congress at the national level has conceded political space available to it to the BJP and state level space to regional parties.
Several Kashmiri leaders who also quit, with their resignation letters in New Delhi on Friday. Pic/PTI
“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,” alleged Azad, who joined the Congress in Jammu & Kashmir in mid 1970s.
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Fall since 2013
“Unfortunately after the entry of Shri Rahul Gandhi into politics and particularly after January, 2013 when he was appointed as vice president by you, the entire consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him,” Azad wrote.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, chief minister, Assam
“All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party.”
“Unfortunately, the situation in the Congress party has reached such a point of no return that now proxies are being propped up to take over the leadership of the Party. This experiment is doomed to fail because the Party has been so comprehensively destroyed that situation has become irretrievable. Moreover, the chosen one would be nothing more than a puppet on a string.”
Jairam Ramesh, Congress general secretary
The former Union minister, who also governed Jammu & Kashmir, alleged that on the directions of the coterie that runs the AICC today, “my mock funeral procession was taken out in Jammu”.
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“Those who committed this indiscipline were feted in Delhi by the General Secretaries of the AICC and Shri Rahul Gandhi personally.”
“While you [Sonia] are just a nominal figurehead all the important decisions were being taken by Shri Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs,” he said.
‘Polls a sham’
Azad also termed the entire organisational election process a “farce and a sham”. “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 Gandhi.
Referring to the letter written by him and 22 other leaders in August 2020 to flag the “abysmal drift” in the party, Azad said that 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”.
Mid 1970s
When Azad joined the Indian National Congress
2013
Year when Congress’s downfall started, as Azad claims
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