SRINAGAR: Senior Congress leader and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday resigned from all posts of the party, including the primary membership.
The resignation comes days after he resigned from the position of chairman of the campaign committee and from the political affairs committee of Jammu and Kashmir Congress hours after his appointment.
In a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Azad wrote that the party has lost the will and the ability under the tutelage of what he called the coterie.
“Unfortunately, after the entry of Rahul Gandhi into politics and particularly after January 2013, when he was appointed Vice President by you (Sonia Gandhi), the entire consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him,” he said.
“One of the most glaring examples of his (Rahul Gandhi) immaturity was the tearing up of the government ordnance in the full glare of the media,” he added.
“This childish behaviour completely subverted the authority of the Prime Minister and the government of India. This one single action more than anything else contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA government in 2014 that was at the receiving end of a campaign of calumny and insinuation from a combination of forces of the right wing and certain unscrupulous corporate interests,” Azad wrote.
“Under your stewardship since 2014 and subsequently that of Rahul Gandhi, the Congress has lost two Lok Sabha elections in a humiliating manner. It has lost 39 out of the 49 assembly elections held between 2014 – 2022. The party only won four state elections and was able to get into a coalition situation in six instances. Unfortunately, today, the Congress is ruling in only two states and is a very marginal coalition partner in two other states,” he said.
“After Rahul Gandhi stepped down in a ‘huff’ and not before insulting all the senior party functionaries who have given their lives to the party in a meeting of the extended working committee, you took over as interim president. A position that you have continued to hold even today for the past three years. Worse still the ‘remote control model’ that demolished the institutional integrity of the UPA government now got applied to the Indian National Congress. 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 (personal assistants),” said Azad in his letter to Sonia Gandhi.
Referring to Rahul Gandhi’s planned nationwide political campaign, he said the party must carry out the Congress Jodo exercise (fix Congress) rather than Bharath Jodo Yatra (Unite India campaign).
“The Indian National Congress 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. In fact, before starting Bharath Jodo Yatra the leadership should have undertaken a Congress Jodo exercise across the country. It is therefore with great regret and an extremely laden heart that I have decided to sever my half-a-century-old association with the Indian National Congress,” Azad in his letter to Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
