Ghulam Nabi Azad quits Congress party, says coterie runs AICC
Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from all positions, including primary membership of the Congress Party. He had some days ago stepped down as chairman of the campaign committee in Jammu and Kashmir.
FollowIn a significant setback for the Congress party, veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad has resigned from all positions, including primary membership of the party.
In his resignation letter, Azad said that the Congress party has lost both the will and ability under the tutelage of the coterie that runs the All India Congress Committee to "fight for what is right for India".
Recalling his close personal relationship with the Gandhi family, Azad said that he has great personal regard for interim president Sonia Gandhi's individual trials and tribulations that "would always continue". He further said that he and some of his colleagues would now "persevere" to "perpetuate the ideals" for which they dedicated their entire adult lives outside the formal fold of the Congress party.
Slamming the "coterie that runs the AICC", Azad said that before undertaking the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the party's leadership should have undertaken a 'Congress Jodo' exercise across the country.
In his resignation letter, Azad said that the 'proxies' are being propped up to take over the party's leadership. This experiment, he said, is doomed to fail because the party has been 'comprehensively destroyed'.
Training guns on Rahul Gandhi without naming him, Azad said that the party has conceded political space to the BJP and regional parties because the leadership has, for the last eight years, been trying to foist a "non-serious" individual at the helm of the party.
Calling the election process within the party a farce and a sham, Azad claimed that 'hand-picked lieutenants of the AICC' have been coerced to sign on lists prepared by the "coterie that runs the AICC sitting in 24, Akbar Road".
He squarely blamed the AICC leadership for "perpetrating a giant fraud on the party to perpetuate its hold on the ruins of what was once a national movement that fought for and attained independence".
To recall, Azad, a member of the group of 23 leaders who sought systemic changes in the Congress party, had stepped down some days ago as chairman of the campaign committee in Jammu and Kashmir.
