Veteran politician and former Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Wednesday lavished praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi while launching an all out attack on the Congress party. The Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) chief said the Congress is still run by "remote control" and alleged that a "new coterie of inexperienced sycophants" manage its affairs.
Azad, who quit the Congress last year following differences with its leadership, said Rahul Gandhi might not be holding any post as of now but everyone knows that he is the captain of the ship. "Everybody knows who is calling the shots,” he added.
"If tomorrow (Congress president Mallikarjun) Kharge ji wants a CWC (Congress Working Committee) meeting in Bengaluru, nobody will go...so I only wish him (Rahul Gandhi) to navigate the ship," he said and added that "it is for him to find whether he is a good navigator or a bad navigator, I am out of the ship and I better navigate in the river,” the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister told PTI ahead of the release of his book Azaad — An Autobiography.
Azad was part of a group of 23 Congress leaders who, in August 2020, wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi seeking organisational reform in the party.
"I guess it was beginning of the end as the leadership instead of taking this letter as a wake-up call, and strengthening the organisation and holding party elections on the lines we had suggested, both Rahul and Sonia ji took offence and viewed it as a challenge to their authority," Azad said, adding that instead of heeding to the suggestions, the G-23 was snubbed as being pro-BJP,” he said.
Later, talking to NDTV, Azad said he had got little generosity from the Congress for his years of dedicated service and even claimed that Prime Minister Modi was more generous to him.
"I haven't attended any of his (PM Modi's) dinner parties, which was unbecoming on my part but he ignored it. In seven years as the Leader of the Opposition I have given 70 years' worth of speech against them. But he has ignored it and behaved as a statesman... There are occasions in life when one has to behave like a statesman," he told the TV channel.
In his interview to PTI, Azad maintained that he had great respect for Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, but acknowledged there were political differences with Rahul Gandhi.
"...as an individual, I am not saying Rahul Gandhi is a bad person. As an individual he is a good person. Maybe we have some political issues but those are the political issues that I had with him as long as I was in the Congress. Since I am no longer in the Congress party, I am nobody to tell him what is right for him and what is wrong for him," the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) chief said.
