GN Azad to float party in 20 days, hold key meet in J&K: Close aide GM Saroori

Former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad will float a national political party in the next 20 days and will be the chief ministerial candidate for Jammu and Kashmir and when elections are held, his close aide and former minister GM Saroori said on Sunday.

Azad, a Congress veteran, resigned from the party on Friday blaming former president Rahul Gandhi for demolishing the entire consultative mechanism. Saroori who quit the party hours after Azad along with a dozen senior Congress leaders — most of them former ministers and legislators — said on Sunday that the new party will be a secular one.

“He (Azad) is going to be the chief minister face of the new party for J&K and consultations are going on. Azad is going to form the national party within next 20 days. It’s going to be a secular party, which is our ideology and all of us have joined with him for that ideology,” Saroori told.

Azad was unavailabe for comment.

Saroori’s candidature for the post of the Congress’s J&K unit chief being overlooked and the party’s decision to go with Vikar Rasool instead was among the reasons Azad quit.

On Sunday, Saroori said Azad’s resignation has triggered an exodus from the J&K Congress. “More than 1,500 leaders and workers have already joined Azad and many more will be joining him in the coming days. It’s going to be Congress Mukt (Congress-free) J&K now. Nothing will be left with the Congress in J&K,” he said.

Throwing his weight behind the planned new outfit, Saroori said: “Azad will be coming to J&K on September 4, and there is going to be a big meeting of party leaders and some important decisions will be taken that day.”

Soon after Azad’s resignation, eight top leaders from J&K, including three former ministers and legislators, had resigned in solidarity.

“Azad is the tallest leader of J&K, under his chief ministership from 2005-2008, (the then state of ) J&K witnessed a lot of development from Tulip Garden to the new Hajj House, hospitals, medical colleges and new districts and a lot of new projects were sanctioned for J&K. He gave jobs to hundreds of youth across J&K and his tenure was the golden period for J&K,” Saroori said.

Referring to the Centre’s move of August 5, 2019, to end the state’s special status under Article 370 of the Constitution and subsequent bifurcation into two Union territories, Saroori said Azad was the only leader who stood for the rights of the people of J&K. “Azad is the only leader who can take J&K on the path of the development.”

Meanwhile, the state leadership of the Congress on Sunday held a meeting in Srinagar. Former state chief GA Mir said the meeting was held to show solidarity with the Congress’s central leadership.

He hit out at those who resigned from the party following Azad, saying they were emerging as the “A team” of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). “There were people who had not adopted Congress ideology but were hero-worshippers, they will move out,” he said.

“Till now we were calling them B team or C team, now they are coming forward as ‘A team’. The mask is now coming off. People of J&K will now decide,” he added.

J&K BJP spokesperson Altaf Thakur said Azad forming a political party was a welcome step.

“In a democracy, everybody has the right to form a political party. It’s premature to say whether he could become chief minister of J&K or not,” said Thakur.

Meanwhile, former minister Taj Mohiuddin resigned from the Congress on Sunday.

“Today, I wrote to the Congress president and the general secretary and others that I am resigning from all the posts which I was holding, including the primary membership of Congress,” Mohiuddin, a DDC member from Uri, told reporters at a press conference. He said he will join the Azad-led party.