‘Disappearing Azad Party’: Jairam Ramesh takes dig at Azad after DAP members return to Cong

New Delhi [India], January 17 (ANI): Taking a dig at former party member and Union minister Ghuam Nabi Azad after several founding members of his fledgeling Democratic Azad Party (DAP) returned to the Congress on Tuesday, the party’s general secretary in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, calling the outfit the ‘Disappearing Azad Party’.

More than fifty office bearers of the DAP, including founding members, as well as leaders of other political parties joined the Congress on Tuesday. “As I had indicated on Monday, there was an exodus today in Jammu from the Disappearing Azad Party as well as other parties to the Congress. There will very soon be a similar flight back to Congress from Srinagar,” tweeted Ramesh.

In what is seen as a major setback to Azad, former MLC and DAP general secretaty Choudhary Nizamuddin Khatana and former chairman of the Gujjar and Bakarwal Board, Jammu and Kashmir, Choudhary Gulzar Khatana, both prominent founding members of the fledgeling outfit, switched over to the Congress on Tuesday.

Ramesh asked Azad to decide “if he is with Modi Sarkar or secular parties”.
“Ghulam Nabi Azad must decide if he is with Modi Sarkar or secular parties,” Ramesh added.

On the homecoming, of sorts, for the Congress members who had linked their political lot with the former Jammu and Kahsmir chief minister, Ramesh said, “Nearly all members of Ghulam Nabi Azad’s party have now returned to the Congress. They had just left for a month’s holiday with Azad.”

Azad quit the Congress in August this year, bringing his 52-year-long association with the party to a close.

Aftr severing ties with the party he had served for over five decades, the former Congress stalwart launched the Democratic Azad Party at an event in Jammu in September last year.

In his resignation letter to Sonia Gandhi, he had targeted the party leadership, especially Rahul Gandhi, over the way the party had been run in the last nine years.
In the hard-hitting five-page letter to the AICC chairperson, Azad claimed Sonia is only “a nominal head” as the party is run by a coterie.

He further alleged that all the major decisions in the party were taken by “Rahul Gandhi or worse, his security guards and PAs”.

Recounting his long association with the Congress, Azad had said the situation in the party has reached a point of “no return”.

In a stinging atack on Rahul, he labelled the Wayand MP as a ‘non-serious individual’ and ‘immature’.