Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 26: Causing a massive damage to the Congress, the veteran party leader with more than five decades standing Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday resigned from the party with no holds barred blistering attack on Rahul Gandhi holding him responsible for all the ills facing the party.
Singling out Rahul, whom he called a “non-serious individual,” Azad ripped into him for “childish behaviour”, “glaring immaturity” who had “demolished” the “entire consultative mechanism” in the party, sidelined all “senior and experienced” leaders and let a “new coterie of inexperienced sycophants” run the party.
In his three-page resignation letter to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the former union minister and the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Azad cited insults and sidelining of seniors by Rahul Gandhi and his coterie as the reason for his departure. Azad blamed Rahul for the Congress’s defeat in the 2014 national election – a turning point for the party that has been struggling to win elections since. The Congress was “comprehensively destroyed” and had reached a point of no return, he declared, and slammed a “remote control model” in which Sonia Gandhi is “just a nominal figurehead” while important decisions are taken by “Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs (personal assistants).”
Reacting to Azad’s explosive resignation letter, the Congress spokesperson at a press conference spokespersons said it was “unfortunate” that the senior leader had resigned in such fashion at a time when the party is gearing up for massive nationwide mobilisation against the ruling BJP. He also called the points highlighted by the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister as “inaccurate.”
The Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh also questioned his character. “GNA’s DNA has been modi-fied,” he said, accusing him of “betraying” the grand old party. “A man who has been treated by the greatest respect by the Congress leadership has betrayed it by his vicious personal attacks which reveals his true character. GNA’s DNA has been modi-fied,” he said. Azad’s scathing criticism of Rahul Gandhi and public resignation from Congress has triggered a massive backlash from party loyalists, with many questioning his intent.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who is being tipped to take over the Congress presidentship from Sonia Gandhi, said Azad was on several posts over the last 42 years, and no one expected such a letter from him. “Sonia ji is in US for check-up and you are releasing a letter – this is not good,” he said, adding that Mr Azad was a sycophant himself during the time of Sanjay Gandhi.
Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit, also part of G-23, expressed dismay and a “sense of betrayal” over Mr Azad’s resignation from the party. “When I read your letter of resignation, it gave me a sense of dismay and unfortunately, then a sense of betrayal,” he wrote to Mr Azad, adding that the G-23 letter “had raised the banner of reform, not a banner of revolt.” Social media is flooded with Congress leaders arguing that Azad enjoyed a lot of power and held top party posts without having any mass base and got upset when denied continued access to privilege.
Azad’s exist was the latest big exit from the Congress in the past three years and the third this year after Kapil Sibal and Ashwani Kumar. Azad, 73, said the Congress had conceded its political space to the BJP at the national level and the regional parties at the state levels “because the leadership in the past eight years has tried to foist a non-serious individual” at the helm of the party.
“Unfortunately, after the entry of Rahul Gandhi into politics and particularly after January 2013, when he was appointed Vice President by you, the entire consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him,” Azad wrote, pointing out that Sonia Gandhi had heeded senior leaders. “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,” he added.
All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined, he said, and “new coterie of inexperienced sycophants” started running the affairs of the party. “One of the most glaring examples of his immaturity was the tearing up of the government ordinance in the full glare of the media by Rahul Gandhi,” he said.
Rahul Gandhi in 2013 tore up a controversial ordinance or special order to spare convicted lawmakers from disqualification and called it “complete nonsense”, embarrassing his own Congress-led government and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
“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’s letter said.
Azad went on to chronicle the Congress’s downspiral over the past few years, pulling no punches. “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.”
Azad said since the 2019 national election the situation has only worsened. “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 continue to hold even today for the past three years.”
The former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister said he joined the Congress in the 1970s, when it was still taboo to be associated with the party in his home state. Azad was a leading member of the G-23 or the group of 23 “dissenters” who wrote to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 calling for a complete overhaul of the organization and a full-time, collective and visible leadership.
He said after that letter, he was attacked, vilified and humiliated. The Congress, Azad said, has reached a “point of no return” as “proxies” were being propped up to take over the leadership. The “chosen one” would be nothing more than a puppet on a string, he felt, calling the upcoming internal polls a “giant fraud.” The Congress has lost both the will and the ability “under the tutelage of the coterie” that runs it to fight for what is right for India, he said.
The former Rajya Sabha member said instead of a “bharat Jodo” campaign – Rahul Gandhi will travel the country – the leadership should have gone for a “Congress Jodo” exercise.
The Congress said it was “most regrettable” that a senior leader quit just before the party’s big campaign. Sources close to Azad have said he plans to start a new party and contest the coming elections to Jammu and Kashmir state Assembly and if needed join hands with the BJP after the elections.
“We have read the letter of veteran Congress leader Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad that has been released to the media. It is most unfortunate that this has happened at a time when Congress President Smt Sonia Gandhi, Shri Rahul Gandhi and the entire party organisation is involved in fighting the BJP on public issues of mehangai (price rise), berozgaari (unemployment) and polarisation and when final preparations are being made for the Mehangai par Hallo Bol rally in New Delhi on Sept 4th and for launch of the Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari on Sept 7th,” the party said.
Departure of Azad, who was honoured with Padma Bhushan last year, from the Congress has bared the internal rifts at a time when the party has been trying to refresh its strategies ahead of the 2024 national elections. His resignation has sparked buzz about a new political party that may be floated.
