Veteran leader and former Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from all the positions of the Congress party on Friday, in one of the most significant blows to the party before the 2024 elections. Azad criticized former party chief Rahul Gandhi for his “immaturity” and “demolishing the consultative mechanism” in the party.

Azad, a G-23 dissident who had written to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 demanding a total overhaul of the organization and full-time, visible leadership, said in a scathing letter that Sonia Gandhi was just a nominal figurehead while all crucial decisions were made by Rahul Gandhi “or rather worse his security guards and PAs.”

The accusation against Rahul Gandhi is that he “demolished the whole consultative apparatus in the party which existed prior to 2013; all senior and experienced politicians were sidelined; a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started ruling the party.

Days after resigning from the organizational position of Jammu and Kashmir due to health reasons, Azad stated in the five-page letter that the situation within the Congress party had reached a “point of no return.”

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

The attack comes just a day after it was reported that the Congress leadership planned to focus on the “Bharat Jodo Yatra” and give Rahul Gandhi one final chance to take over the party’s leadership, so the polls for the position of Congress head would be postponed even again.

Azad launched a scathing attack on Rahul Gandhi, alleging that the national party has given in to the BJP and other regional parties at the state level. He attacked the Gandhis stating, “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 resigned stating that the remote control model that destroyed the UPA got applied to Congress.

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