Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 30: While the Congress is facing a total erosion in Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of the resignation from the Grand Old Party of its veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, the former chief minister is reported to have told some of his erstwhile colleagues that his position had become untenable because of “palace intrigue” against him by a section of the Congress.
As many as 64 senior Congress leaders in Jammu and Kashmir, including former Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand, resigned from the party in support of Azad on Tuesday asserting that Azad’s vision will shape a new and bright future for Jammu and Kashmir. They submitted a joint resignation letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Chand along with others, including former ministers Abdul Majid Wani, Manohar Lal Sharma, Gharu Ram and former MLA Balwan Singh, announced their resignations from the Congress, at a press conference.
Over a dozen prominent Congress leaders, including former ministers and legislators, besides hundreds of Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) members, municipal corporators and district and block level leaders have already left the Congress to join Azad over the past four days.
Three senior Congress leaders, all members of then Azad-led Group of 23 dissenters, Anand Sharma, Prithviraj Chavan and Bhupinder Hooda, visited Azad at his home in Delhi and asked him “first hand” why he quit without consulting them and why he did so even after Sonia Gandhi announced internal elections for a new Congress president, according to former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan. He said Azad’s response was that his position in the party had become untenable because of “palace intrigue.”
Mr Chavan welcomed the party elections and also the Gandhis’ refusal to run for president. “Elections should be free and fair,” he said. Azad quit his party of five decades on Friday, slamming Rahul Gandhi in a five-letter resignation letter to Sonia Gandhi. He accused Rahul Gandhi of “childish behaviour and immaturity” and blamed him for the Congress’s decline and election defeats.
Anand Sharma had expressed shock and said the development would “pain all Congressmen”. “It’s a serious development and will pain all Congressmen. I’m personally shocked. This situation was entirely avoidable. We were hopeful that there would be serious introspection but unfortunately, that process was subverted,” Sharma had said shortly after Azad’s exit was announced. Azad, 73, had led the “G-23” or 23 dissenters who wrote to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 urging a complete overhaul of the Congress and “clear, full-time and visible leadership.”
The “rebel” group, which included leaders like Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari and Mukul Wasnik, was very vocal in demanding sweeping organizational changes in the Congress to arrest its leadership drift. Another prominent member of the group, Kapil Sibal, left the party in May.
Azad has said he will launch a party in Jammu and Kashmir. The announcement has triggered an exodus in the Jammu and Kashmir Congress. “All of us had a very long association with the party spanning over decades and devoted all our energy and resources towards expanding the party in Jammu and Kashmir but unfortunately we found that the treatment meted out to us was humiliating,” Balwan Singh said, reading out from the joint resignation letter signed by 64 leaders and senior functionaries from across Jammu Province.
The letter further said, “With our leader and mentor Ghulam Nabi Azad having resigned from the party on the issue listed by him in a letter to you [Sonia], we believe that we should also come out of Congress to make some worthwhile contribution in building a positive political society where people are heard and responded too.” “We all support Azad and we will join him in his journey to lead J&K to a bright future,” they said in the resignation letter.
Claiming that Jammu and Kashmir is facing an unprecedented crisis in the absence of an elected government, Singh said Azad’s decision to launch a national level party from Jammu will inspire hope and new determination to set things right once and for all. “We are confident that J&K will be able to get statehood back after a gap of three years under the leadership of Azad. He is the sole and most powerful voice for statehood of J&K and early elections,” he said.
Singh said Azad was a perennial hope for the people of J&K for bridging gaps between regions and communities. “We are sure that his [Azad’s] vision will help J&K and its depressed masses to come out of the dark shadows of pessimism and shape a new and bright future for J&K,” he said.