Congress hits back at Ghulam Nabi Azad, says ‘CONTENT of his letter not factual, TIMING is…’

Congress also questioned the time of Ghulam Nabi Azad's resignation saying, “Content of his letter is not factual, timing is awful.” Acknowledging that Ghulam Nabi Azad was a senior party leader, Congress said that it was “saddening that he quit when the party fighting against inflation and polarisation.”

NEW DELHI: The Congress central leadership on Friday hit back minutes after its senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from all party positions and blamed Rahul Gandhi for causing serious damage to the party. Reacting to his resignation, Congress general secretary and national spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said, “It is unfortunate, regrettable that this happened when the organisation is combating BJP on price rise, unemployment among other issues.”

Congress also questioned the time of Azad's resignation saying, “Content of Ghulam Nabi Azad's letter is not factual, timing is awful.” Acknowledging that Ghulam Nabi Azad was a senior party leader, Congress said that it was “saddening that he quit when the party fighting against inflation and polarisation.”

LIVE : Congress Party Briefing by Shri @Jairam_Ramesh and @ajaymaken at AICC HQ. https://t.co/pfXvyeEUs1 — Congress (@INCIndia) August 26, 2022

The reactions from Congress came minutes after Ghulam Nabi Azad, in his lengthy resignation letter, blamed Rahul Gandhi for the destruction of the party and alleged that proxies are propped up for the president`s post, who will only be a mere puppet.

Azad alleged that they were abused, humiliated, insulted and vilified in a specially summoned meeting of the extended Congress Working Committee meeting after their letter seeking reforms in the party in 2020 which was signed by 23 leaders.

In his resignation letter, he said, "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 the situation has become irretrievable. Moreover, the `chosen one` would be nothing more than a puppet on a string."

He said at the national level Congress has conceded the political space available to the BJP and state-level space to regional parties. "This all happened because the leadership in the past eight years has tried to foist a non-serious individual at the helm of the party," he alleged without taking the name of Rahul Gandhi.

Azad alleged that in August 2020 when he and 22 other senior colleagues, including former Union Ministers and Chief Ministers wrote to Sonia Gandhi to flag the abysmal drift in the party, the "coterie" choose to "unleash its sycophants on us and got us attacked, vilified and humiliated in the crudest manner possible".

The veteran leader alleged that on the directions of the coterie that runs the AICC today his mock funeral procession was taken out in Jammu and those who committed this indiscipline were feted in Delhi by the General Secretaries of the AICC and 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," Azad wrote in the letter.

He said that the only crime committed by the 23 senior leaders, who wrote that letter out of concern for the party, is that they pointed out the reasons for the weaknesses in the party and the remedies thereof.