Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad resigns from all party positions

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from the party including from all the positions on Friday.

Azad wrote a letter to Congress president Sonia and said senior leaders have been sidelined and a “coterie of inexperienced sycophants” are taking all the decisions.

“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,” Azad wrote in the letter.

“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,” Azad’s leader read.

The senior leader also lashed out at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and blamed him for Congress’s poor performances 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’ behavior completely subverted the authority of the Prime Minister and the Government of India. This one single action more than anything else contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA government in 2014,” wrote Azad in the letter.

Earlier, former Congress MLA Haji Abdul Rashid Dar stated, “We are unhappy as senior leaders were not consulted before deciding on J&K PCC chief. We have resigned from the party’s coordination committee as a protest against the recent announcements of the PCC chief. I have resigned from the Congress primary membership.”

However, on 16 August Azad quit the post of the head of the Jammu and Kashmir Congress campaign committee.