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Ghulam Nabi Azad quits Congress, resigns from all party posts
Lashing out at Rahul Gandhi, Ghulam Nabi Azad called his behaviour immature, childish and accused him of demolishing the consultative process
Indian National Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday resigned from all party posts.
Making a scathing attack on Rahul Gandhi, Azad called his behaviour immature, childish and accused him of demolishing the consultative process.
Azad, one of the three prominent G23 leaders who demanded wholesale changes in the functioning of the party, also alleged that after Rahul became the party president, all senior leaders were sidelined and “a coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party.”
In his resignation letter, Azad praised Sonia Gandhi but fired salvoes at Rahul, who was the party president between 2017 and 2019.
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Azad dubbed Rahul’s tearing up of an ordinance approved by the union cabinet in the UPA era as a “glaring example” of Gandhi’s “immaturity.”
He said, “This childish behaviour completely subverted the authority of the Prime Minister and the government of India. This one single action, more than anything, contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA government.”
Citing a number of reasons from electoral failure to organisational lapses, Azad wrote, “For the reasons mentioned above, especially that the Indian National Congress has lost both its 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 Congress leadership should have undertaken a Congress jodo yatra exercise across the country.
“It is therefore with great regret and extremely leaden heart that I have decided to sever my half a century old relationship with the Congress and hereby resign from all positions including the primary membership of the Indian National Congress,” Azad said.
He also cited the non-fulfillment of several decisions, called Rahul’s resignation in 2019 as an act in a “huff” and said, “worst is the remote-control model that demolished the institutional integrity of the UPA government and now got applied to the INC.”
He also alleged that when they, the G23, raised the “abysmal drift” of the party, the “coterie unleashed its sycophants, got us attacked vilified and humiliated.”
