Almost a week after he and some of his colleagues, who wrote to Congress Speaker Sonia Gandhi last year seeking reforms in the party, addressed an event in Jammu that was seen as a show of force by the dissident group, Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad. On Friday he noted that problems in the party can wait until the Assembly elections are completed. The party has already postponed the election for the post of president of Congress to June.
Azad said the “priority” now is to ensure a congressional victory in the elections and said he and his colleagues will campaign wherever they are called. When asked if a senior leader like him needs an invite, he said he generally campaigns when invited by candidates. “We will campaign for the party and the candidates wherever they call us … ensuring that the victory of Congress will be our focus for the next two months,” Azad told the media.
His comments came days after Congress asked him and other signatories to last year’s letter to focus their energies on five election-bound states to strengthen the party’s hands.
The party had not condemned an incident in which a group of congressional workers in Jammu held a demonstration against Azad and burned his effigy. Congress had said that the people, like Azad, have a free right to speak out.
Azad and Congressional leaders Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Raj Babbar and Vivek Tankha were in Jammu last week.
They addressed a joint public meeting, where the party leadership was criticized for not using an “experienced” leader like Azad and letting him withdraw from Rajya Sabha. A day later, Azad praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi as someone who “does not hide his true self.” Subsequently, Sharma lashed out at the leadership of the Bengal Congress for the “alliance” with the Indian Secular Front led by Abbas Siddiqui, saying that such an association went against the central ideology of the Congress.
All of these movements had sent a signal that the internal battle in Congress, unleashed by the letter, was deepening. Interestingly, four top congressional leaders, who were among the signatories of the letter, had disassociated themselves from these actions, indicating a break in the dissident camp.
While Azad held seat-sharing talks with the DMK in Tamil Nadu in the last Assembly elections, so far he has not been given any responsibility. Some of the letter writers, however, had been assigned assignments. While former CM Prithviraj Chavan of Maharashtra has been appointed head of the selection committee for the selection of candidates in Assam, former Union Minister M Veerappa Moily has been appointed “chief observer” of the party’s campaign in Tamil Nadu. Mukul Wasnik, a member of the CWC, was charged with overseeing the preparations in Assam.
She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.