In his resignation letter, Ghulam Nabi Azad called Rahul Gandhi childish and immature and accused him of running a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants. He also called Sonia Gandhi a mere figurehead and noted that Congress has lost 39 of the 49 assembly polls between 2014-22 under her and Rahul's leadership.
Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday said that the party "has lost both the will and the ability" to fight for what's right for the country as he resigned from the party, writing in his resignation letter that Rahul Gandhi has sidelined all senior leaders in favour of a coterie of sycophants.
“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,” said Azad in his resignation letter to Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
In his letter, Azad blasted Rahul Gandhi by accusing him of sidelining all senior and experienced leaders and running affairs of the party through a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants.
Azad on Friday resigned from all party positions, including primary membership of the party. He recounted the alleged derailment of the party in his long resignation letter. His resignation came after he resigned from the post of chairman of the campaign committee and from the political affairs committee of the Jammu and Kashmir Congress hours after his appointment.
“Unfortunately after the entry of Shri Rahul Gandhi into politics and particularly after January 2013 when he was appointed as Vice President by you [Sonia Gandhi], the entire consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him,” wrote Azad in his resignation letter.
Azad's resignation followed the resignation of senior party leader Anand Sharma from a key party position offered to him in the poll-bound Himachal Pradesh. Sharma had cited "exclusion and insults" in his resignation from the post.
Talking about his joining Congress, Azad brought his J&K connections to the fore and criticised the treatment Congress gave to Sheikh Abdullah, thus signalling he would likely start his next move from his home state Jammu and Kashmir. He said he joined the Congress in J&K in the mid-1970s when it was still taboo to be associated with the party given its chequered history in the state from August 1953 onwards — the arrest of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah being the nadir of its political myopia. This might be music to the National Conference.
In his letter, Azad talked at length about his political career and his association with Sanjay Gandhi. He said from 1977 onwards, as General Secretary of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) led by Sanjay Gandhi, they went from jail to jail along with thousands of Youth Congress leaders and workers. “My longest period in Tihar jail was from 20th December 1978 to end of January 1979, for leading a protest rally against the arrest of Mrs Indira Gandhi from Jama Masjid Delhi to Parliament House. We opposed the Janata Party dispensation and paved the way for the revival and rejuvenation of the party founded by the Late Mrs Indira Gandhi in the January of 1978. Within three years as a consequence of that heroic struggle the Indian National Congress stormed back into power in 1980.”
Azad, who had served as Union Minister in Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Late PV Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh's governments respectively from 1982 till 2014, accused Rahul Gandhi of being immature.
He wrote, “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. The said ordinance was incubated in the Congress Core Group and subsequently unanimously approved by the Union Cabinet presided over by the Prime Minister of India and duly approved even by the President of India. This 'childish' behaviour completely subverted the authority of the Prime Minister and Government of India.”
Azad, who served recently as the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha for seven years, said this one single action more than anything else contributed significantly to the defeat of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government in 2014 that was at the receiving end of the campaign of calumny and insinuation from a combination of the forces of the right-wing and certain unscrupulous corporate interests.
“Under your stewardship since 2014 and subsequently that of Shri Rahul Gandhi, the INC 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 INC is ruling in only two states and is a very marginal coalition partner in two other states," said Azad in his resignation letter to Sonia.
Azad alleged that the 'remote control model' that demolished the institutional integrity of the UPA government has now got applied to the Congress party. It runs in the party even though Rahul has stepped down as the President.
“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,” said Azad.
Defending his G23 move, Azad said, “In the August of 2020 when I and 22 other senior colleagues including former Union Ministers and Chief Ministers wrote to you to flag the abysmal drift in the party, the 'coterie' chose to unleash its sycophants on us and got us attacked, vilified and humiliated in the crudest manner possible. In fact, on the directions 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.
“For all the reasons mentioned above especially that 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. It is therefore with great regret and an extremely leaden heart that I have decided to sever my half-a-century-old association with the Indian National Congress and hereby resign from all my positions including the primary membership of the Indian National Congress.”
While Gandhis' loyalists in the Congress party unleashed an offensive against Azad, former Congress leaders and outside observers noted the gravity of the letter written by Azad and that the resignation was in the offing for a long time.
Former Haryana chief minister and senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda has said Ghulam Nabi Azad's resignation from all party positions, including its primary membership, was "unfortunate".
He also said when a senior leader takes such a step, it does make an impact on the party organisation.
He said, "It is unfortunate, that is what I can say. He (Azad) has been a Congressman throughout. I had recently said that the party high-command should reach out to Azad and Sharma to address their grievances and concerns."
Azad and Hooda are prominent leaders of the "Group of 23" (G-23) that has been critical of the Congress leadership's decisions.
The grouping, comprising many other prominent veterans including Anand Sharma and Manish Tewari, has been insisting on genuine elections right from the block level up to the Congress Working Committee (CWC) level.
Hooda, who is the leader of the opposition in Haryana, said it was up to the party high-command to decide on the future course of action in the wake of recent developments.
Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit said Azad's resignation expressed dismay and a "sense of betrayal". He added that they had raised the banner of reform, not the banner of revolt.
He said, "When I read your letter of resignation, it gave me a sense of dismay and unfortunately, then a sense of betrayal...But leaving the party unfortunately strengthens the very policies, systems and people that made us write our letter of reform as a demand, as a duty and as our right."
Former J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the resignation was long rumoured to be in the offing. He added it's a big body blow to Congress.
"Long rumoured to be in the offing but a body blow to the Congress none the less. Perhaps the senior most leader to quit the party in recent times, his resignation letter makes for very painful reading. It’s sad, and quite scary, to see the grand old party of India implode," said Abdullah in a tweet.
Observers have also highlighted that Azad's letter and harsh language for the Gandhis, particularly for Rahul, also "raised a big question mark on the internal polls, calling them a sham".
Jaiveer Shergill, who also resigned recently from Congress, said that "leaders across age groups are frustrated" by the coterie culture in the party.
"Now a senior leader is speaking about it becoming a club of PAs and security guards shows that leaders across age groups are frustrated and disappointed by this entire coterie culture that is thriving in Congress," ANI quoted Shergill as saying.
Notably, like Azad, Shergill too had raised the issue of sycophancy at the time of resigning from Congress on Wednesday. The language of his resignation letter addressed to Sonia Gandhi was notably similar to Azad's.
"Sycophancy and coterie is eating into the Indian National Congress as termites," Shergill had told PTI at the time.
"The ideology and the vision of the current decision makers of the Congress is no longer in sync with the aspirations of the youth and modern India. Furthermore, it pains me to say that decision making is no longer for the interest of the public and the country, rather it is influenced by the self-serving interests of individuals indulging in sycophancy and consistently ignoring ground reality. This is something I cannot morally accept or continue to work with," Shergill had written in his resignation letter, as per PTI.