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Congress party leader Salman Khurshid extended his support for Rahul Gandhi following veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from all party posts earlier today on Friday. Amid rising row in the party, Salman Khurshid said that it was "not mature" that the people associated with the party for a long time have left it over small issues.
Salman Khurshid said, “Rahul Gandhi is our leader and will remain so. We don't have a give-and-take relationship with Rahul Gandhi. It is our duty to do something for the party. It is not mature that people who were associated with the party for a long time leave over such a small thing."
The remarks came following Ghulam Nabi Azad and six other party members including RS Chib also resigned from the party. Khurshid further expressed hope for the rise of the party, noting, "it is not that we can't go anywhere but we will not go and rather remain with the party. We see this country's future with the party and hope that it will rise," as per news agency ANI report.
Notably, GM Saroori, Haji Abdul Rashid, Mohd Amin Bhat, Gulzar Ahmad Wani and Choudhary Mohd Akram are amongst the ones who have left the party in Azad's support and in his resignation, Azad had cited the "immaturity" of Rahul Gandhi, whom he blamed for "demolishing the consultative mechanism" in the party.
It is important to note that in a hard-hitting 5 page note to party interim president Sonia Gandhi, the veteran Congress claimed that a coterie runs the party while she was just a nominal head and all the major decisions were taken by "Shri Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs." The development comes days after Azad resigned from the organizational post of Jammu and Kashmir.
While recounting his long association with the Congress and his close relationship with Indira Gandhi, Azad said the situation in the Congress party has reached a point of “no return" and shared “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 have been coerced to sign on lists prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC sitting in 24 Akbar Road."
The veteran leader hit out at Rahul Gandhi, “since the 2019 elections, the situation in the party has only worsened. After. Rahul Gandhi stepped down in a 'huff' and not before insulting all the senior Party functionaries who have given their lives to the party in a meeting of the extended Working Committee, you took over as interim President. A position that you have to continue to hold even today for the past three years."
(With inputs from ANI)