Party didn’t have a chief when Congress leaders sent letter: Ghulam Nabi Azad

Azad’s farewell ahead of his retirement grabbed the headlines as Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke down while talking about him on Tuesday. Modi heaped praise on Azad and called him a leader who cared for his party, country, and Parliament

Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad has said that he and his 22 colleagues wrote to the party chief, Sonia Gandhi, in August demanding internal elections and organisational overhaul as they wanted a full-time president and elected bodies at each level for their organisation to rise from the ashes after back-to-back defeats in the national polls.

Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad. (HT file)

“We wanted to strengthen the organisation and not challenge it,” Azad said in an interview with HT. Azad said they have lost elections earlier too. He added but losing in 2019 and 2014 and getting just 52 and 44 seats in 543-member Lok Sabha and not even having a Leader of Opposition in Parliament’s Lower House was unacceptable. “Some people feel very bad that we have fallen from the sky to even below the ground,” said Azad days before he is due to retire from Rajya Sabha on Monday.

Azad’s farewell ahead of his retirement grabbed the headlines as Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke down while talking about him on Tuesday. Modi heaped praise on Azad and called him a leader who cared for his party, country, and Parliament.

Azad, who rejected speculation that he was likely to join the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, referred to the letter writers and said they have come from the organisation and that is why their accessibility to people is much more than others. “If people cannot meet someone, they come to us. They give us a list of things that were going wrong and needed to be corrected. Then we put it all together, and this is what we wanted the leadership to see.”

Azad called it unfortunate that someone leaked the letter. “That was not our purpose… I would not call it a leak as it is not a state secret; it [letter] was [about] how to strengthen the organisation.”

Azad said the Congress did not really have a president when the letter was written because Rahul Gandhi had resigned. “And the other president [Sonia Gandhi] had said [she will lead for] only one year and that year was going to end that month. That was the reason that we wanted a full-time president.”

Azad said he supported Rahul Gandhi, but he resigned after the 2019 national election loss. He added they spent an hour convincing Rahul Gandhi, but he said no to leading the party again. “So, once he was out, who was there? We requested Mrs Gandhi; she said no.” He added then they all got together and told Sonia Gandhi that she has to be there. “Some said six months, some said four months… we all decided one year. We had no president, the elected one had resigned. And so, when we wrote the letter, there was no president, and we were talking of a third person.”

Azad refused to comment when asked who his preferred candidate was as the process to choose a candidate to lead the Congress will start four months later. “Let the bridge come.”