Barely a few hours after Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from all positions of the Congress party, including primary membership of the party, six senior leaders in Jammu and Kashmir also submitted their resignations “in support of Azad.”
Those who submitted their resignations include former Congress legislators G M Saroori, Haji Abdul Rashid, Mohammad Amin Bhat, Gulzar Ahmad Wani, Rajinder Singh Chib and senior leader Choudhary Mohammad Akram.
Last week, when Azad rejected the offer to become Party’s Campaign Committee chairman for the upcoming Assembly polls in Jammu & Kashmir, Saroori, Wani, Dar and Akram had also refused to accept their new roles in the Congress.
“Resignations of more leaders are expected in coming days in support of Azad. In all likelihood, Azad is floating a new party in Jammu & Kashmir and besides people from Congress, leaders of some local parties too may join the new entity,” sources said.
The development has come as a shock for Congress, which has been trying hard to reconstitute the Jammu & Kashmir unit amid signals that elections could be held in the UT in near future. On August 17, in a major shake-up, the Congress had appointed former MLA Vikar Rasool Wani as the party’s chief of Jammu and Kashmir unit.
Besides appointing new Jammu & Kashmir president, the Congress chief Sonia Gandhi had also appointed a working president and constituted the campaign committee, political affairs committee, coordination committee, manifesto committee, publicity and publication committee, disciplinary committee and Pradesh election committee of Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) with immediate effect.