Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday, August 26 resigned from all party positions, including its primary membership, delivering another blow to the embattled party that has seen a series of leaders exit the party. He had been a vocal member of the G23 group that had been critical of the leadership and sought to make changes in the Congress party. In a five-page letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, he said he was leaving the party with a "heavy heart." The Congress, he said, 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. Before starting a 'Bharat jodo yatra,' the leadership should have undertaken a 'Congress jodo yatra,” the veteran leader said in his letter. He also said that the situation in the Congress party has reached “such a point of no return” that “proxies” were being propped up to take over the party’s leadership.
A few days ago, Azad had resigned from his post of Chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Congress campaign committee, hours after his appointment, citing health reasons. In his letter, Azad recounted his journey in the party since the mid-1970s and said that Rahul Gandhi’s entry into politics destroyed the consultative mechanism within the party. He said that Sonia Gandhi was successful as Congress president at the time of the formation of the UPA-1 and UPA-2 governments, as she heeded the counsel of senior leaders.
“However, 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. All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the Party,” Azad wrote.
Citing examples where Sonia and Rahul Gandhi did not consider various recommendations from the party working group, he said, “Under your stewardship since 2014 and subsequently that of Shri Rahul Gandhi, the INC has lost two Lok Sabha elections in a humiliating manner.” He added that since the 2019 elections, the situation in the party has only worsened. He lamented that the ‘remote control model’ that demolished the institutional integrity of the UPA government, now applied to the Indian National Congress. He added, “While you 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 also called the organisation’s election process a farce and a sham. He also accused the present ‘AICC coterie’ of giving directions to take out Azad’s mock funeral procession in Jammu. “Subsequently the same coterie unleashed its goondas to physically attack the residence of a former Ministerial Colleague Sh. Kapil Sibal, who incidentally was defending you and your kin in the courts of law, for your alleged attacks of omission and commission,” he wrote.
Azad wrote that the Congress had conceded political space to the BJP and regional parties, as the leadership in the past eight years had tried to foist a non-serious individual at the helm of the party. “Some of my other colleagues and I will now persevere to perpetuate the ideals for which we have dedicated our entire adult lives outside the formal fold of the Indian National Congress,” he wrote.
"It is therefore with great regret and an extremely leaden heart that I have decided to sever my half a century old assocation with Indian National Congress," read Ghulam Nabi Azad's resignation letter to Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi pic.twitter.com/X49Epvo1TP
— ANI (@ANI) August 26, 2022