Jammu and Kashmir: Ghulam Nabi Azad floats own party, to decide on 'Hindustani name' for it

New Delhi: Ghulam Nabi Azad announced the launch of his own political party while addressing a public meeting in Jammu on Sunday at Sainik Colony. He is yet to decide on the name of the party.

This was Azad’s first meeting since he ended his nearly 50-year association with the Congress on 26 August.

“The people of Jammu and Kashmir will decide the name and the flag for the party. I will give a Hindustani name to my party that everyone can understand,” said Azad.

He added that his party will focus on the restoration of full statehood, right to land and employment to native domicile.

According to Hindustan Times, Azad arrived at the venue after a rousing welcome from his supporters at Jammu airport. The former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir wore a Dogra turban befitting the occasion.

“I am always with the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Right now, I am not the chief minister or any minister. I am just a human. In the past one week, many people have resigned from the Congress and have supported me,” Azad said during his address.

Azad also thanked those five ministers who joined him. “Three of them joined a regional party, I never named that regional party chief, but they got agitated when I spoke of floating my own party,” Azad added.

Former ministers Taj Mohiuddin, Abdul Majid Wani, Manohar Lal Sharma, GM Saroori, RS Chin, Jugal Kishore, Peerzada Mohd Sayeed, and former MLA Balwan Singh, who were present at the event, endorsed Azad for the position of Jammu and Kashmir’s next chief minister.

During his address he also launched an attack on the grand-old party. According to ANI, he said, “Congress was made by us, by our blood, not by computers, not by twitter. People are trying to defame us but their reach is limited to computers and tweets. That is the reason Congress is nowhere to be seen on the ground.”

“People from Congress now go to jail in buses, they call DGP, commissioners, get their name written and leave within an hour. That is the reason Congress has been unable to grow,” he added.

Azad had earlier targeted the party leadership, particularly Rahul Gandhi, in his resignation letter to Sonia Gandhi, for the way the party has been run over the last nearly nine years.

He claimed in the five-page letter that the party is run by a coterie, with Sonia Gandhi serving as “a nominal head” and all major decisions being made by “Rahul Gandhi or, worse, his security guards and PAs.”

In recounting his long association with the Congress, Azad stated that the party’s situation has reached a “point of no return.”

With input from agencies

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