As many as five leaders of the Congress have resigned from their positions in support of the resignation of the veteran Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday.
Among those who have resigned from party posts are GM Saroori, Haji Abdul Rashid, Mohd Amin Bhat, Gulzar Ahmad Wani and Choudhary Mohd Akram.
“We the five ex-MLAs are resigning from the Congress party in support of Ghulam Nabi Azad. Now, only the JKPC president will be left alone,” said J&K Congress leader GM Saroori.
In his letter of resignation to the Congress interim president, Azad had resigned from all the party posts, including its primary membership.
Azad cited the “immaturity” of Rahul Gandhi, whom he blamed for “demolishing the consultative mechanism” in the party.
In a hard-hitting 5 page note to party interim president Sonia Gandhi, Azad claimed that a coterie runs the party while she was just a nominal head and all the major decisions were taken by “Shri Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs”.
The development comes days after Azad resigned from the organizational post of Jammu and Kashmir.
Recounting his long association with the Congress and his close relationship with Indira Gandhi, Azad said the situation in the Congress party has reached a point of “no return.”
“The entire organisational 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 have been coerced to sign on lists prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC sitting in 24 Akbar Road,” Azad wrote.
Hitting out at Rahul Gandhi, Azad wrote, “Since the 2019 elections, the situation in the party has only worsened. After. 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 to continue to hold even today for the past three years.”
Azad said that it was “worse still the ‘remote control model’ that demolished the institutional integrity of the UPA government now got applied to the Indian National Congress.”
He continued the attack on Rahul Gandhi but praised Sonia Gandhi for playing a “sterling” role as Congress President in both the UPA governments.
Azad’s resignation comes ahead of the 2024 elections and after indications that elections to the post of Congress chief would be postponed yet again. The Congress top leadership has announced a ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’.