Ghulam Nabi Azad blames Rahul Gandhi for Congress troubles, flags 'immaturity'

In the midst of an existing political crisis within the Congress, veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday quit all party positions, including its primary membership, attacking Rahul Gandhi for "demolishing" the existing "consultative mechanism" of the party. In a five-page letter, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, who has also served as union minister in the past, came down heavily on the former Congress chief, alleging that after his appointment “all senior and experienced leaders were sidelined” and a “new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party”.

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“Unfortunately after the entry of 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,” Ghulam Nabi Azad wrote in a no-holds barred attack. Ghulam Nabi Azad - in the letter - also spoke of the back-to-back poll setbacks the party had faced over the years.

Azad also referred to the letter written by him and 22 other leaders of the G-23 committee in August 2020 to flag the "abysmal drift" in the party as he said "the coterie chose to unleash its sycophants on us and got us attacked, vilified and humiliated in the most crude manner possible". “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' behavior completely subverted the authority of the Prime Minister and Government of India,” he said.

“This one single action more than anything else contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA Government in 2014 that was at the receiving end of a campaign of calumny and insinuation from a combination of the forces of the right wing and certain unscrupulous corporate interests.” "Worse still the 'remote control model' that demolished the institutional integrity of UPA govt now got applied to INC. While you're just a nominal figure heard all the important decisions were being taken by Shri Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs," the veteran underlined.