Rahul the reason I am not in Congress; you've to be spineless to be in today's Congress: Ghulam Nabi Azad

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, April 5

Rahul Gandhi is the reason I and many others are not in the Congress today, veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said on Wednesday lamenting that leaders had to be “spineless to survive in today’s Congress.”

In a free-wheeling discussion on the state of the Congress, a party he quit in August 26 last year after bitterness with then Congress chief Sonia Gandhi over a G-23 letter to her demanding party overhaul, Azad also said the UPA-2 Cabinet should have stuck to the 2013 ordinance which then Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi trashed as “nonsense” publicly.

“It was a very weak cabinet. The Cabinet should have stuck to the decision. PM should not have bowed before Rahul Gandhi.

No outsider except the President can overrule a cabinet decision. That was a wrong decision of the Cabinet. Today Rahul Gandhi would have been saved by that ordinance.”

Though out of the Congress now, Azad said Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification as MP was wrong, but added that the party should “not issue a whip to the leaders to accompany Rahul to ED office or to Surat court. Ex-PM PV Narasimha Rao appeared before the Jain Commission but never asked any leader to accompany him”.

These things have to be voluntary, you can’t issue whips to who is who of the party to accompany leaders, said Azad speaking after the launch of his autobiography “Azaad” by former union minister Karan Singh, who praised Azad’s two-and-a-half year of J&K chief ministership as “the best period of J&K governance”.

Claiming that today’s Congress was far removed from the times of Indira Gandhi who ensured elections to all party posts, Azad said, “You have to be spineless to be in today’s Congress. Rahul Gandhi is the reason I and many other leaders are not in the Congress today.”

Asked if he would return to the Congress should Sonia Gandhi call him up, Azad said, “If it were up to Sonia Gandhi I would not be where I am today. Even if she inducts me back into Congress she can’t guarantee what would be done of me.”

Azad’s oblique reference was to Rahul being the actual Congress party head and calling the shots.

Azad also reminisced his time as General secretary in charge of Punjab, a post he accepted at the peak of Punjab militancy, after resigning as a union minister.

“Rajiv Gandhi didn’t accept my resignation for seven days. He said I was signing my death warrant. But I told him if that was the price of peace in Punjab I was ready to pay it,” said the former minister who worked with four PMs — Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh.

Azad survived 26 attempts on his life in Punjab, his book reveals.

Asked today whether he could ally with the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir after elections in the UT, Azad said, “No one is untouchable in politics. Here there are no permanent enemies and no permanent friends. NC and PDP have both allied with BJP in the past.”

While admitting that his heart was still with the Congress ideology, Azad rued today’s Congress doesn’t want people like him. “Today the Congress only wants politicians who tweet every five minutes and tell the leadership that they are winning 500 Lok Sabha seats after Bharat Jodo Yatra,” the former leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha said.

The book launch of Azad was attended by leaders across party lines — NC’s Farooq Abdullah, NCP’s Supriya Sule, DMK’s Kanimozhi, NCP’s Praful Patel, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Dinesh Trivedi from the BJP among others.

The Congress leaders who attended the event include Anand Sharma.