Congress in battlefield, anyone quitting party impacts us: Salman Khurshid on Azad's resignation

Reacting to Ghulam Nabi Azad's resignation from Congress, senior party leader Salman Khurshid on Friday said the grand old party is in battlefield and anyone quitting the party impacts it.

Khurshid said, "If he (Azad) had any frustration or any complaint, he could have told us. If he would have considered us his companion in the party, he could have talked to us about it. If he needed any cooperation, we would have done that too."

"We remained together in every phase of the party. The party gave us something or the other during its good times, but today leaving the party is not right," Khurshid added.

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the person (Azad), who was given the highest respect by the Congress leadership, has shown his true character by making a personal attack on the Congress leadership.

"First Modi's tears in Parliament, then Padma Vibhushan, then extension of his residence. It's not a coincidence, it's a collaboration", he said.

While resigning from all posts in the party, Azad sent a five-page letter to Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi. Reportedly, he may form a new party now.

Azad, in his resignation letter, blamed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for ruining the party, alleging that for the post of party President, he would choose a person who would just remain a puppet and take all the decisions behind the scenes on his own.

Azad alleged that G-23 leaders, who demanded reforms in the party in 2020, were abused, humiliated and defamed in the Congress Working Committee meeting.

In his resignation letter, he said, "Unfortunately, the situation in the Congress party has become such that now proxy is being used to take over the leadership of the party. This experiment will surely fail. The party is thus ruined."

Without naming Rahul Gandhi, he alleged, "All this happened because in the last eight years, the party leadership tried to put a non-serious person at the top."

Azad alleged Rahul Gandhi congratulated party workers who took out his mock funeral in Jammu.

Azad said that his mock funeral in Jammu was encouraged by the top guns of the party.

"In fact, at the direction of the coterie that runs the AICC, today my mock funeral procession was taken out in Jammu. Those who committed this indiscipline were feted in Delhi by the General Secretaries of the AICC and Shri Rahul Gandhi personally," he wrote in the letter.

He said that the only crime committed by the 23 senior leaders, who wrote the letter out of concern to the party, was that they explained the reasons for the weaknesses of the party and the way for improvement.