'Coterie of Inexperienced Sychophants': Ghulam Nabi Azad Quits Congress With 'Immature, Childish' Rahul Gandhi Barb

In probably one of the biggest blows to the Congress ahead of the 2024 elections, veteran leader and former Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad quit the party on Friday, calling out ex-party chief Rahul Gandhi for “immaturity” and “demolishing the consultative mechanism” in the party.

In a scathing letter, Azad — a member of the G-23 dissidents group who had written to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 calling for a complete overhaul of the organisation and a full-time and visible leadership — said Sonia Gandhi was just a nominal figurehead while all important decisions were taken by Rahul Gandhi “or rather worse his security guards and PAs”.

Accusing Rahul Gandhi of “demolishing the entire consultative mechanism in the party which existed pre-2013, all senior and experienced leaders were side-lined, new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the party”.

The situation in the Congress party has reached a point of ‘no return’, Azad wrote in the five-page letter, days after he resigned from the organisational post of Jammu and Kashmir citing health issues.

“The entire organisational election process is a farce and a sham. At no place anywhere in the country have elections been held at any level of the organisation. Handpicked lieutenants of the AICC has been coerced to sign on lists prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC sitting in 24 Akbar Road,” Azad wrote.

The attack comes just a day after it was revealed that the elections to the post of Congress chief would be postponed yet again since the Congress top brass wanted to concentrate on the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ as well as give Rahul Gandhi one last chance to pick up the reins of the party.

In a no-holds barred attack on Rahul Gandhi, Azad said the party at the national level conceded to the BJP and regional parties in the state level. “This all happened because the leadership in the past 08 years has tried to foist a non-serious individual at the helm of the party”.

He said Rahul Gandhi’s sudden decision to step down after the 2019 poll debacle had only worsened the situation. “The remote control model that destroyed the UPA got applied to Congress,” Azad wrote.

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