Ghulam Nabi Azad ‘fooling’ people of Jammu and Kashmir: Congress
Congress on Sunday hit out at Ghulam Nabi Azad accusing him of “twisting” facts in his favour to “befool” the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The party also slammed its former leader saying he is working at the behest of his “political bosses”.
In an official statement, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said, “Ghulam Nabi Azad while continuing to fulfil his role assigned to him by his bosses today again made a blatant attempt to distort history in an attempt to generate an undue sympathy from the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”
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Ramesh claimed that the former J&K chief minister was lying while saying he fought first election in which he was elected to Lok Sabha on a Congress ticket on his own without help from anyone.
“This is a white lie. In 1980, he was elected as a Lok Sabha member from Maharashtra’s Washim constituency, a Congress stronghold. Prior to that, he had suffered a humiliating defeat in an assembly election in his home state (Jammu and Kashmir),” said Ramesh.
The Congress general secretary said in his first election Azad got 959 votes and forfeited his security deposit, after that he spent most part of his political career in Rajya Sabha.
The Congress leader was reacting to Azad’s speech at his first public rally after exiting the party and rebuked major parts of his speech in which he made references towards his initial political journey with the Congress and Rahul Gandhi.
In the rally on Sunday, Azad spelled out the agenda of his yet-to-be-named party – the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood, protection of land and job rights of its residents, and the return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits.
Azad, 73, ended his five-decade-long association with the Congress on August 26, terming the party “comprehensively destroyed”. He also lashed out at Rahul Gandhi for “demolishing” the party’s entire consultative mechanism.
