On April 5, former Congress leader and chief of Democratic Progress Azad Party Ghulam Nabi Azad lashed out at Congress Party, specifically at disqualified Congress MP Rahul Gandhi for tearing down the ordinance that was binned in 2013 after Gandhi protested. Azad was in conversation with India Today’s Rajdeep Sardesai at the launch event of his book ‘Azaad’ where he remarked, “If you are in Congress, you are spineless”.
During the conversation, Azad said when the ordinance was tabled in 2013 to save the lawmakers from immediate disqualification if convicted and sentenced in a court case, Rahul Gandhi opposed it. He was not even a member of the cabinet at that time. Calling it unfortunate, Azad said the cabinet should have stuck to the ordinance and not bowed down to Gandhi’s protest.
Azad pointed out that Gandhi was not in any legal position to do what he did, as no outsider could reject the ordinance the way he did. Only the President of the country can strike down the ordinance, not a member of the parliament. However, the cabinet collectively decided to go with binning the ordinance after Rahul opposed it. “Look now, the one who cut it is applied on him,” he said.
Azad said when a political party in power makes some law, they have to think about the future and plan for the time when they would not be in power. Congress failed to do so, and now Rahul Gandhi faced the heat in the form of disqualification from Lok Sabha after he was convicted in a defamation case and sentenced to two years in prison. The Congress scion has now appealed in court against his sentencing.
‘When you are in Congress, you are spineless’
In his statement, Azad also pointed out that Rahul Gandhi was the main reason he was no longer in the Congress party. “I wish Rahul Gandhi would have worked 1/50th of what Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi did, he would have succeeded,” he remarked.
Sardesai tried to corner Azad by saying had he been a Rajya Sabha member of Congress, he would have lined up outside the Surat Court to support Rahul Gandhi. Azad said, “Yes, it is true. Because when you are in Congress, you are spineless.” Notably, Azad recently remarked that he was happy that he left the Congress party as he would not have stood outside Surat Court as the Congress leaders and workers did.
Interestingly, he pointed out that he is “2000 per cent more Congressi” then any leader who is running politics on Twitter. However, the party does not need leaders like him, but it wants people who can do Twitter politics and have the audacity to claim that Congress would get 500 seats owing to Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Azad said the support for any party leader from other party members should not be because a whip was issued. He said, “I was the one who brought a vote of no confidence against former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. I told him you have to face Jain Commission, but although I brought the no-confidence motion, I am going to support you, and I did.” He added not even former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi issued a whip forcing then MPs to support her, it came organically.
Ghulam Nabi Azad left party in 2022
In August 2022, Ghulam Nabi Azad declined the post of chairman of the campaign committee and also resigned from the political affairs committee of the Jammu and Kashmir state unit of the Congress. He refused to accept the posts within hours of his committee appointment and left the party. Later, Ghulam Nabi Azad formed his own political party Democratic Progress Azad Party.
