G Nabi Azad resigns from congress
G Nabi Azad resigns from congress
Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday, 26 August, resigned from all positions including the primary membership of the party.
PRESS TRUST OF KASHMIR SRINAGAR AUG 26:-The move by the veteran leader, who served in various top positions including as Union minister and a chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, comes amid his prolonged differences with the party’s central leadership and the Gandhis.
Azad was one of the leaders dubbed as ‘G-23’ who demanded reforms and change in the party’s leadership.
Azad’s resignation comes as a jolt to the Congress that has recently seen a spree of key party leaders quitting, including Jaiveer Shergill, Kapil Sibal, Ashwani Kumar, Hardik Patel, and Sunil Jhakhar.
26 August, 2022
Hon’ble Congress President.
I joined the Indian National Congress in Jammu & Kashmir in mid 1970’s when it was still a taboo to be associated with the party given it’s chequered history in the state from 8 August 1953 onwards the arrest of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah being the nadir of it’s political myopia,
Notwithstanding all this, Inspired from my student days by the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Lal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Subhash Chandra Bose and other leading lights of our freedom struggle. Subsequently at the personal insistence of Late Sh Sanjay Gandhi I agreed to shoulder the responsibility of the Presidentship of the Jammu & Kashmir Youth Congress in 1975-76. I was already serving the Indian National Congress as a Block General Secretary from 1973-1975 after completing my post graduation from Kashmir University.
During the period from 1977 onwards as General Secretary of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) led by Late Shri Sanjay Gandhi we 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 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.
After the tragic death of youth icon, I took over as the National President of IYC in 1980. As President, I had the privilege of inducting your husband Late Shri Rajiv Gandhi into the Indian Youth Congress as a Member of the National Council on the first death anniversary of Late Shri Sanjay Gandhi on 23 June 1981. Subsequently Late Shri Rajiv Gandhi took over the leadership of the IYC in a Special Session of IYC held in Bangalore on 29th & 30th December of that year (1981) again under my Presidentship.
I have had the honor of serving as a Union Minister in Late Smt. Indira Gandhi’s. Late Sh Rajiv Gandhi’s. Late Sh. PV Narasimha Rao’s and Dr Manmohan. Singh’s government’s respectively from 1982 till 2014.
I have also had the opportunity of serving as a General Secretary in the AICC
with every President of the Indian National Congress since the mid 1980’s.
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 most crude manner possible.
Infact 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.
Subsequently the same coterie unleashed its goondas to physically attack the residence of a former Ministerial Colleague Sh. Kapil Sibal who incidentally was defending you and your kin in the courts of Law for your alleged attacks of omission and commission.
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 an specially summoned meeting of the extended CWC meeting
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 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 organizational election process is a farce and a sham. At no place anywhere in the country have elections been held at any level of the organisation. Handpicked lieutenants of the AICC has been coerced to sign on lists prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC siting in 24 Akbar Road. At no place in a booth, block, district or state was an electoral roll published, nominations invited. scrutinized, polling booths set up and elections held. The AICC leadership is squarely responsible for perpetrating a giant fraud on the party to perpetuate it’s hold on the ruins of what once was a national movement that fought for and attained the Independence of India. Does the Indian National Congress deserve this in the 75th year of India’s independence is a question that the AICC leadership must ask itself.
You may recall that after you took over as the Congress President after dethroning Shri Sita Ram Kesri, the Congress leadership had met for a brainstorming in Parchmari in October of 1998. Subsequently there was another such session in Simla in 2003 and then again in Jaipur in January 2013. I had the privilege of chairing the working group on Organisational Affairs on all these three occasions.
However regrettably none of the recommendations of these retreats were ever properly implemented. Infact in January of 2013 at Jaipur. I had proposed with the assistance of others members of the Committee a detailed action plan to revitalize the party in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. That action plan duly approved by the CWC.
These recommendation’s were supposed to be implemented in a time bound manner before 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Unfortunately, these recommendation’s are lying in the storeroom of the AICC for the past 9 years Inspite of my repeated reminders in person both to you and the then Vice President Shri Rahul Gandhi from 2013 onwards to implement these recommendation’s. However, no effort was made to even examine them seriously.
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.
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. A position that you have continue to hold even today for the past three years.
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 rather worse his security guard’s and PA’s.
