On Friday, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from all party posts, including the party’s primary membership.
Ghulam Nabi Azad’s resignation was anticipated as earlier this month, Azad had given his resignation from the post of the head of the Jammu and Kashmir Congress campaign committee.
Ghulam Nabi Azad was a senior top Indian politician and formerly a member of the Indian National Congress who served as the seventh chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir from 2005 to 2008 and was the Minister of Health and Family Welfare. He also led the party successfully in the 2002 Assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian award, in 2022 by the Indian Government in the field of Public Affairs. He resigned from all posts including primary membership in Congress on the 26th of August, 2022.
He wrote a five-page letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. Azad’s letter begins with a long recollection of his 35 years in service to the party, noting his continued support for the party and his presence in the governments of former Congress Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh.
He praised Sonia Gandhi’s contributions to the party and her role in bringing in the UPA-1 and UPA-2 governments. However, he says that her success with these two governments came because she heeded the advice of the party’s senior leaders, indicating that she is no longer doing so.
He went on to say, “However unfortunately after the entry of Shri Rahul Gandhi into politics and particularly after January 2013, when he was made vice-president by you, the entire consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him,” Azad wrote in the letter.
He criticised Congress for having lost its political will. The letter further detailed, according to the Hindustan Times, Azad’s close relationship with former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and went on to express that the party had reached a “point of no return”.
Azad also criticised the party’s organisation election process, calling it a “farce and a sham”.
“Handpicked lieutenants of the AICC have been coerced to sign on lists prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC sitting in 24 Akbar Road,” the newspaper quoted the leader as saying.
“All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party,” he wrote further.
Azad made particular mention of a 2013 incident in which Rahul Gandhi tore up a government ordinance to save convicted legislators from disqualification, which the former held singularly responsible for the UPA’s defeat in 2014.
In the letter, Azad also points out to the numerous proposals lying dormant in Congress storerooms, and describes the party’s electoral outcomes since Rahul Gandhi’s entry into politics as “humiliating”.
Further hitting out at the former Congress chief, Azad lambasted the way Rahul Gandhi stepped down from the party’s leadership, accusing him of insulting senior leaders. He then noted that Sonia Gandhi, who has been serving as the party’s interim chief for the past three years – since Rahul Gandhi stepped down – is just a “nominal figurehead” and that important decisions are still being taken by Rahul, “or rather worse, his security guards and PAs”.
The letter then goes on to refer to the letter of the dissent written by the group of 23 senior Congress leaders (G-23) and notes how no stock was taken of what the leaders had to say.
Azad wrote that the only crime the leaders committed in writing that letter was to point out the party’s weaknesses and provide remedies. “Unfortunately, instead of taking those views on board in a constructive and cooperative manner, we were abused, insulted, humiliated and vilified in a specially summoned meeting of the extended CWC,” he added.
Underlining the grim prospects of the party in the future, Azad continues to assail Rahul Gandhi, calling him a “puppet on a string” and a “non-serious individual at the party’s helm”.
Noting that he and his colleagues will attempt to “perpetuate the ideals of what (they) have committed their entire adult lives to”, Azad signed off.
Azad’s decision comes a little over a week after the party’s attempt to reshuffle its cadres in Jammu and Kashmir backfired. While Azad was appointed the head of the Congress’s Jammu and Kashmir campaign committee – and was also named as a member of the political affairs committee – he resigned shortly after his appointment for two reasons: first, that his close aide Ghulam Ahmed Mir was removed as state Congress president; and second, because he reportedly saw being a mere member of the PAC as a demotion, having to work under a leader junior to him in Tariq Hamid Karra.
While the Congress stated that Azad’s refusal came due to “health reasons”, other sources close to the party said that it indicated internal strife.
Azad’s relationship with the Congress’s central leadership has been fraught in recent times, with him joining the group of 23 leaders (G-23) who had written a letter of dissent to Sonia Gandhi a few years ago.
In Kashmir, National Conference leader Omar Abdullah today described Ghulam Nabi Azad’s resignation from the Congress as a body blow to the party, saying it was “sad” and “scary” to see the grand old party implode.
Long rumoured to be in the offing but a body blow to the Congress none the less. Perhaps the senior most leader to quit the party in recent times, his resignation letter makes for very painful reading. It’s sad, and quite scary, to see the grand old party of India implode. https://t.co/Z6gj9AophE
— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) August 26, 2022
“Long rumoured to be in the offing but a body blow to the Congress nonetheless. Perhaps the senior leader to quit the party in recent times, his resignation letter makes for very painful reading,” he tweeted.