UP Congress leader attacks Ghulam Nabi Azad, Where's the party heading?

Nirmal Khatri, UP Congress chief  said, "In 1996, Ghulam Azad entered into a poll pact with the Bahujan Samaj Party during the UP polls. The results were nothing special. And, in the 2017 UP Assembly elections, he entered into an alliance with the Samajwadi Party, and the seat tally dipped to seven, the lowest so far. In other words, whenever he became the in-charge of UP, the Congress took the back gear."

The attack comes as there is no end to the saga of 'wars' within the Congress party.

Khatri, who is also a former Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from Faizabad, also said, "From 1977 to 1980, Azad was not seen in active role. But, when he felt that the Congress can bounce back to power, then in 1979 he courted arrest during a protest. On the other hand, lakhs of Congress workers had already undertaken ''jail bharo aandolan'' in 1977 in the country". This implies Khatri was trying to dismiss Ghulam Nabi Azad as an easy-going opportunist.

Till the other day, he was so close to the throne and had been alongside Sonia Gandhi when the infamous coup of 1997 had thrown out veteran Sitaram Kesri from the AICC Headquarters.

Another leader Kapil Sibal, a so called dissenter, has said:“I think that people across the country, whether they belong to the Congress party or not…they all express appreciation for our concerns. So, obviously, there is a public sentiment which appreciates our desire to rejuvenate the Congress. If the Congress is not there, the opposition is not there. We (Congress) need to be the lynchpin around which the wheel of the opposition revolves".

For his part, Ghulam Nabi Azad had said: "For the last many decades, we don't have elected bodies in the party. Maybe we should have pushed for it 10-15 yrs ago. Now we are losing elections after elections, and if we have to come back we need to strengthen our party by holding elections".

"Congress will continue to sit in the Opposition for the next 50 years.....if party's organisational polls are not held," he said making a blistering attack on the Gandhi family and those who want Rahul Gandhi to come 'easy route' as the new AICC chief. 

Harish Khare writes about Congress crisis 

"There is a certain Kafkaesque quality to this war among the Congressmen. It is a fight without real antagonists and without real enemies. Arrayed on one side are the Rahul Cabalists who want a quick end to the state of suspended animation, instigated in the first place by their own man walking away from the job; on the other side are some of the established organisational men, who also are insisting that the leadership issue must be sorted out and that the party cannot wait indefinitely for the vacillating Rahul Gandhi to make up his mind whether he wants to shoulder the responsibility of leading the organisation.

Both sides were acutely aware that the Rahul Gandhi-centric uncertainty was haemorrhaging the party. Jyotiraditya Scin­dia’s defection to the BJP was a rude shock to the Congress rank and file; after all, here was an important leader, touted as Rahul Gandhi’s most trusted right-hand man, crossing over to the enemy camp and bringing down the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh, that too in these days of acute political adversity; and then came the young Sachin Pilot’s rebellion in Rajasthan. The Congressmen were a deeply dispirited lot as most could directly trace the Bhopal disaster and the Jaipur revolt to the leadership conundrum at 24, Akbar Road". 

Interestingly, Khare, who was media advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also says:

The senior most ‘dissenter’, Ghulam Nabi Azad, can very well be accused of being responsible for the decline and decimation of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh

Earlier, Jitin Prasada was also targeted in UP and dissidents already have warning in Maharashtra.