Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) chief Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad has decided not to campaign for his Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections owing to health reasons while telling his party candidates that they could withdraw from the race due to his absence in electioneering.
Azad, who returned to Delhi on Monday morning, a day after he suffered chest pain in Srinagar, was admitted to AIIMS, where doctors advised him to take rest for some time as his blood pressure remained very high.
Sources close to Azad told DH that the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, who formed DPAP in September 2022 after quitting Congress, has decided not to campaign in the Assembly elections due to his health condition, which requires medication and rest for sometime. He has conveyed his inability to lead the campaign to party colleagues.
The DPAP, which has not created any ripples in the union territory so far, has announced 13 candidates on Sunday for the Assembly elections but Azad’s decision has put a spanner in the plans of the candidates.
Sources indicated that Azad was upset over his party not being able to grow and challenge the main players like National Conference, PDP and Congress despite him being a senior leader. Also, several leaders who joined him at the time of formation of the party returned to the Congress since Lok Sabha elections.
The exit of leaders like Taj Mohiuddin, Haji Abdul Rashid Dar, Sham Lal Bhatt, Abdul Majeed Wani and Gulzar Wani among others had weakened the DPAP.
In the Lok Sabha elections, DPAP’s performance was not impressive as its candidates could garner only 40,665 votes from two seats where it contested, prompting ground-level workers to switch sides. In Anantnag-Rajouri, it bagged 25,561 votes while from Srinagar, its vote count was 15,104.
DPAP had in recent days sought to dispel rumours that Azad is rejoining Congress after merging his party. On August 14 and 18, it issued statements to deny rumours in this regard.
Azad was the pivot of a G-23 rebellion in Congress in 2020, seeking clarity on leadership and roadmap for the party after the 2019 Lok Sabha debacle. The letter by the group of 23 leaders had led to intense churning in the party but in August 2022, he quit the party attacking top Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi.