Ghulam Nabi Azad to launch new party before J&K polls

New Delhi: Veteran politician Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday said he would launch a new party soon and that its first unit would be set up in Jammu and Kashmir.

"I am in no hurry as of now to launch a national party but keeping in mind that elections are likely to be held in Jammu and Kashmir, I have decided to launch a unit there soon," Azad, who resigned from the Congress earlier in the day, told PTI.

Azad, who had served as Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Union minister under various prime ministers and the chief minister of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir, refused to divulge any further details on the formation of his new party.

Refusing to be dragged into any discussion over his resignation, Azad said, "I have thought about this decision for long and there is no going back."

Azad lashes out at Congress high command

Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday ended his five-decade association with the party, terming it comprehensively destroyed and lashing out at Rahul Gandhi for demolishing its entire consultative mechanism.

Laying bare the many schisms in the party, Azad wrote a five-page no holds barred letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, describing her as a nominal figurehead and alleging that all important decisions are being taken by Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs".

Azad, whose resignation from all positions in the party, including its primary membership, comes ahead of crucial organisational elections, accused the leadership of committing a giant fraud" on the party in the name of "farce and sham" internal polls. He said no such exercise had taken place at any level and lists are being prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC.

In his scathing criticism of the leadership, particularly Rahul Gandhi, the 73-year-old termed the former Congress chief a "non-serious individual at the helm". Proxies, Azad wrote to Sonia Gandhi, are being propped to take over the leadership and they will be nothing more than "a puppet on a string".

Azad has been almost a constant in the party's decision-making processes through the decades -- the Sanjay Gandhi days and the tumultuous Emergency years under Indira Gandhi, the Rajiv Gandhi era, the Narasimha Rao period and eventually the tenure of Congress' longest serving president Sonia Gandhi who he addressed his blistering missive to.

A member of the G-23 group that sought change in the Congress, he told her the party had "lost both the will and ability under the tutelage of the coterie" running the affairs of the party to fight for what is right for India.

A"remote control model" had demolished the institutional integrity of the UPA government and now the Congress party, the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister alleged in the often emotive, angry letter detailing his grievances.

"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," Azad wrote.

All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and the new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party," he alleged.

Azad said the Congress at the national level has conceded 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.

"The AICC leadership is squarely responsible for perpetrating a giant fraud on the party to perpetuate its hold on the ruins of what once was a national movement that fought for and attained the Independence of India," Azad lashed out.

"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."

Congress' response

In its counterpunch, the Congress said the contents of Azad's letter were "not factual" and its timing "awful", coming when the entire party organisation was engaged in combating the BJP on key issues like price rise and polarisation.

A man who has been treated with the greatest respect by the Congress leadership has betrayed it by his vicious personal attacks which reveals his true character, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh tweeted, adding that "GNA's DNA has been Modi-fied".

Hitting out at his former colleague, the party's media department head Pawan Khera added that Azad became restless as soon his Rajya Sabha term got over. He can't stay without post even for a second, Khera said.

"We have seen the love between Narendra Modi and Ghulam Nabi Azad, it was also seen in Parliament. That love has been manifested in this letter," he said.