Azad resigns from Cong, launches no-holds-barred attack on Rahul Gandhi

In his five-page letter to Sonia Gandhi, Ghulam Nabi Azad singled out Rahul Gandhi, saying he had ‘demolished’ the ‘consultative mechanism’ in the Congress and let a ‘new coterie’ of ‘inexperienced sycophants’ run the party.

New Delhi: In a massive setback to the Congress, veteran Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday resigned from the party and launched a blistering no-holds-barred attack on Rahul Gandhi. Singling out Rahul, whom he called a “non-serious individual”, Azad said he 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.

Azad was a member of the Congress Working Committee and a member of the Sonia Gandhi-headed political affairs group.

Amid reports that the Gandhis are keen that Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot take over as Congress president, Azad in his five-page damning letter to Sonia said, “Unfortunately, the situation in the Congress party has reached such a point of no return that now ‘proxies’ are being propped up to take over the leadership of the party.”

“This experiment is doomed to fail because the party has been so comprehensively destroyed that the situation has become irretrievable. Moreover, the chosen one would be nothing more than a puppet on a string,” he said.

Significantly, Azad, a prominent signatory to the letter 23 senior leaders had written to Sonia Gandhi in August 2020 calling for sweeping changes in the party, also mentioned the infamous symbolic tearing up of an ordinance – brought by the Manmohan Singh government to negate a Supreme Court order on disqualifying convicted MPs and MLAs – by Rahul in 2013 and argued that act of his had contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA government in 2014.

He called it “one of the most glaring examples” of Rahul’s immaturity. He said that “childish” behaviour of Rahul “completely subverted the authority of the Prime Minister and the Government of India.”

That “one single action more than anything else contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA government in 2014 (the Government) that was at the receiving end of a campaign of calumny and insinuation from a combination of the forces of the right wing and certain unscrupulous corporate interests,” he said in the resignation letter to Sonia, who is abroad for a medical check-up.

Interestingly, Azad lavished praise on her, saying she as the president of the party played a “sterling role” in the formation of both the UPA-I and UPA-II governments.

“However, one of the major reasons for this success was that as President you heeded the wise counsel of senior leaders, besides trusting their judgement and delegating powers to them. However, unfortunately after the entry of Rahul Gandhi into politics and particularly after January 2013, when he was appointed as Vice President by you, the entire consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him,” he said.

“All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party,” he said.