Things came to a head in the Congress on Friday with veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad calling it quits after tearing into Congress president Sonia Gandhi for letting the party go adrift and applying UPA’s remote control model to the Congress.In a five-page letter to Sonia, Azad, 73, resigned from all posts including primary membership of the Congress ending his 50-year-old association with the party.
- After the entry of Shri 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.
- One of the most glaring examples of this immaturity was the tearing up of a government ordinance in the full glare of the media by Shri Rahul Gandhi.
- Since the 2019 elections the situation in the party has only worsened. After Sh. 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.
- 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 worse his security guards and PAs.
- 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. The experiment is doomed to fail because the party has been so comprehensively destroyed that situation has become irretrievable. Moreover, the ‘chosen one’ would be nothing more than a puppet on a string.
- Unfortunately, at the National level we have conceded the political space available to us to the BJP and state level space to regional parties. This all happened because the leadership in the past 08 years has tried to foist a non-serious individual at the helm of the party.
- The entire organisational election process is a farce and a sham…Handpicked lieutenants of the AICC has been coerced to sign on lists prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC sitting in 24 Akbar Road. At no place in a booth, block, district or state was an electoral roll published, nominations invited, scrutinised, polling booths set up and elections held. The AICC leadership is squarely responsible for perpetrating a giant fraud on the party to perpetuate its hold on the ruins of what once was a national movement that fought for attained the Independence of India.
- On the direction of the coterie that runs the AICC today, my mock funeral procession was taken out in Jammu. Those who committed this indiscipline were feted in Delhi by the General Secretaries of the AICC and Shri Rahul Gandhi personally.
- The only crime committed by the 23 senior leaders who wrote that letter out of concern for the party is that they pointed out both the reasons for the weaknesses in the party and the remedies thereof. Unfortunately, instead of taking those views on board in a constructive and cooperative manner we were abused, humiliated, insulted and vilified in a specially summoned meeting of the extended CWC meeting.
- The Indian National Congress has lost both the will and the ability under the tutelage of the coterie that runs the AICC to fight for what is right for India. In fact, before starting Bharath Jodo Yatra, the leadership should have undertaken a Congress Jodo exercise across the country.
He said the Congress had reached a point of no return with Sonia Gandhi serving as a nominal figure head since 2019 and all decisions being taken by Rahul Gandhi or “worse still his security guards and personal assistants”.
For the first time, Azad, a former minister in the UPA, slammed Rahul Gandhi’s act of publicly tearing an ordinance approved by the then cabinet chaired by Manmohan Singh and later by the then president and noted, “This one single action more than anything else contributed significantly to the defeat of 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”.
“While undoubtedly, as the president of the Congress, you played a sterling role in the formation of both the governments, one of the major reasons for this success was that as the 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 vice president by you, the entire consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him. All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party. One of the most glaring examples of this in maturity was the tearing up of a government ordinance in the full glare of the media by Rahul Gandhi,” said Azad.
He recalled his association with past prime ministers and how he served in the Cabinet of all Congress PMs and said to Sonia that under her stewardship since 2014 and subsequently that of Rahul Gandhi, the Congress had lost two Lok Sabha elections in a humiliating manner.
“The party has lost 39 out of 49 Assembly elections held between 2014 and 2022. It has won only four state elections and was able to get into a coalition situation in six instances. Unfortunately, today the Congress is ruling only in two states and has a very marginal coalition partner into others. Since the 2019 elections, the situation has only worsened,” said Azad.
“Worse still the remote control model that demolished the institutional integrity of the UPA government now got applied to the Congress,” said Azad.He lamented that the Congress had reached such a point of no return that now proxies were being propped up to take over the leadership of the party.The reference was to a possible nomination of Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot as party president with the CWC to meet this Sunday to approve the party chief’s election schedule.Azad questioned the organisational poll process saying it was doomed to fail because the party had been so comprehensively destroyed that the situation had become irretrievable.“The chosen one would be nothing more than a puppet on a string. Unfortunately, at the national level, we have conceded the political space available to us to the BJP and state-level space to regional parties. All this happened because the leadership in the past eight years has tried to foist a non-serious individual at the helm of the party,” Azad wrote, adding that he and other senior leaders were heaped with crude humiliations when they wrote a letter to Sonia in August 2020 in larger party interest.The former minister said the Congress organisational election process is a farce and a sham.“At no place anywhere in the country has elections being held at any level of the organisation. Handpicked lieutenancy of AICC has been coerced to sign on the list prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC sitting in 24 Akbar Road. At no place in a booth, block, district or state was an electoral roll published or nominations invited, scrutinised, polling booth set up or elections held.“The AICC leadership is squarely responsible for perpetrating a giant fraud on the party to perpetuate its hold on the ruins of what once was a national movement,” said Azad asking AICC to introspect if this is what the Congress deserved in the 75th year of India’s Independence.Azad hinted at forming a new party with “colleagues” noting, “Some of my other colleagues and I will now persevere to perpetuate the ideals for which we have dedicated our entire adult lives outside the formal fold of the Congress.”
