- Monday, January 13, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
India National Congress, India’s century-old party and the country’s main opposition force, received a major blow on Friday (26) when senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad quit after making a strong criticism of the Gandhis and the organisational leadership.
Azad’s step also came weeks ahead of the Congress’s presidential election.
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In a letter addressed to interim president Sonia Gandhi, Azad, who started his political career in early 1970s and last served as the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha last year, expressed his disappointment over sidelining of senior leaders and the alleged growing influence of a “coterie of inexperienced sycophants” as the reasons that triggered his exit.
Azad’s latest move came after he stepped down from the post of the head of Jammu and Kashmir Congress campaign committee on August 16.
The 73-year-old, who was born in Bhalessa in Jammu and Kashmir, has been the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and central minister.
He slammed former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, saying the latter’s immaturity has been responsible for the Congress’s slump and poor performance in elections.
“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 Rahul Gandhi… This ‘childish’ behaviour completely subverted the authority of the Prime Minister and government of India. This one single action more than anything else contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA government in 2014,” Azad wrote in the letter.
The incident happened in September 2013 when Gandhi, who was the party’s vice president then, tore up an ordinance which was cleared by none other than the cabinet of prime minister Manmohan Singh from his own party which was brought to shield convicted lawmakers.
He had called it a “complete nonsense”. However, years later in 2019, he had conceded that his expression was “too aggressive”.
Azad said that the grand-old party has suffered a string of “humiliating” electoral defeats since 2014 which include two national and 39 state elections and is currently in power in only two states and serving as a minor coalition partner in two others.
He also called Sonia Gandhi, 75, a nominal figurehead and underscored that she became the interim president after Rahul Gandhi stepped down in 2019 “in a huff” over the party’s poor results in the general elections that year.
“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 Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs,” he said.
Azad also mentioned that the Congress has lost both the will and ability under tutelage of the coterie that runs its all-India committee.
The veteran is a member of the party’s G-23 group that seeks changes.
