Under fire from Congress for his criticism of the party leadership, Ghulam Nabi Azad revealed why he chose to publicly attack Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi after his resignation on August 26.
Addressing a rally in Jammu’s Bhaderwah on Thursday, the former Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha contended that he was forced to respond after Congress launched a tirade against him. The 73-year-old politician spent nearly 5 decades in Congress, had stints in both houses of Parliament and served on key posts including the J&K CM and Union Minister.
Ghulam Nabi Azad observed, “They ask me why did you speak out against Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. If you might have watched, I conveyed everything in my letter to her. I was quiet for three days. I didn’t say anything. But when missiles were fired from their end, when the firing started, I said it is written in Islam and politics that you should save your life if someone attacks you. They fired missiles at me. They were destroyed merely after I fired from a .303 (rifle). If I had fired a ballistic missile, they would have disappeared”. He is set to launch his own political party which will contest the J&K Assembly polls.
In his 5-page letter addressed to the Congress president after leaving the party, Ghulam Nabi Azad opined that the entire consultative mechanism was demolished by Rahul Gandhi when he took over as Congress vice president in 2013. He lamented that all senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party. To highlight the Wayanad MP’s “immaturity” and “childish behaviour,” he recalled the tearing up of a UPA ordinance in the full glare of the media by Rahul Gandhi.
Dubbing the entire organizational election process a “sham”, he held the Congress leadership including Rahul Gandhi responsible for this state of affairs. “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. 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”. According to him, there was an attempt to prop up a non-Gandhi president who will essentially remain a puppet.
