Azad-Soz spat reaches Sonia’s door

The faction fight in the Jammu and Kashmir unit of the Congress is hotting up. State party chief Saifuddin Soz and loyalists of his rival, Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, are descending in Delhi on Wednesday to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

The faction fight in the Jammu and Kashmir unit of the Congress is hotting up. State party chief Saifuddin Soz and loyalists of his rival, Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, are descending in Delhi on Wednesday to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

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Soz is keen to brief the party president about Azad’s interference in party affairs in the border state. And Azad’s loyalists plan to urge Sonia to change the party leadership in the state, Congress sources told HT on Tuesday.

The sources said Soz has been simmering at Azad’s increased interest in party affairs in the state.
The Union minister had visited J&K for a week in end-June, accompanied by three of the state’s ministers, including deputy chief minister Tara Chand. What piqued Soz was that Azad gave no intimation of his visit to the state unit of the party, as is the norm.

Both Azad and Soz are believed to have prevailed upon the Congress high command to drop loyalists from rival camps in the expansion of the council of ministers in J&K on Saturday.

As recently as Monday, Azad was quoted by a Jammu-based newspaper as saying that Soz was “an accidental politician more by chance than by any genuine conviction”.

A senior Congress leader however sought to play down the tussle by saying, “The two are jealous of each other.”