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Rahul Gandhi never said signatories of letter were colluding with BJP: Azad
A Congress leader also said Azad made it amply clear that the letter was not against Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi as “misconstrued” and alleged by some people
New Delhi: Ghulam Nabi Azad, leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and veteran Congress leader, clarified on Monday that Rahul Gandhi had never stated that those who wrote the letter to interim party chief Sonia Gandhi were colluding with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
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“Rahul Gandhi at no point of time inside the Congress Working Committee (CWC) or outside said that the signatories to the letter were doing it at the behest of the BJP. This is a totally wrong thing, which has been attributed to Rahul Gandhi,” Azad told HT.
“Secondly, what I said at the CWC meeting was that, unfortunately, most of the people have not seen the full text of the letter. Because in the leak, which is unfortunate, only some portions of the letter have come out. Without going into the full text of the letter, some of my colleagues yesterday (on Sunday) said that this was being done at the behest of the BJP. I have said that if any of those people and leaders will prove that it was done at the behest of the BJP, I will resign. In that context, I said that I will resign if they prove it and I did not ask Rahul Gandhi to prove that. I have not resigned,” he said.
In the meeting, a Congress leader said Azad made it amply clear that the letter was not against Sonia and Rahul as “misconstrued” and alleged by some people.
For the past one month, the leader quoted Azad as having said, there were rumours doing the rounds that Rahul does not want to come back as the Congress president at the moment and Sonia does not want to continue as the party’s interim chief beyond August 10 when she had completed her one-year term.
There were also suggestions that Sonia might appoint somebody to the post and the letter was written in that context, the former Jammu & Kashmir chief minister told the CWC.
Azad told the meeting that the letter was written to urge the interim Congress president to discuss and consult with them before appointing somebody to the post. Should a third person be appointed to the top post, that person has to do certain things, such as form the parliamentary board, be active and have collective leadership, he told the CWC.
Azad said letter was the do’s and don’ts for the third person and that they should be consulted before appointing anybody to the highest post in the party.
