Facing criticism from all quarters both within and outside Congress party for showing shift in political appeasement from Nehru-Gandhi family to Prime Minister Narendra Modi interestingly months before his scheduled retirement from Rajaya Sabha, the Congress veteran Gh Nabi Azad a five time Union Minister and a former Chief Minister of erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir state is crossing all limits in praising Prime Minister Modi and almost inching closer to say what Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah had said about Jawaharlal Nehru the first Prime Minister of India during his historical joint address to a public rally with him at Lal Chowk Srinagar. Just to remind the readers it may be noted here that during his joint address to a public rally at Lal Chowk late Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah had while addressing to Nehru quoted a Persian couplet of Amir Khusrau a 13th-14th century poetic legend of Indian-sub-continent and the couplet is read as“Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari” and the English translation of this couplet could be “I am you, and you are me, I am the body, you soul; So that no one can say hereafter, That you are someone else, and me someone else”. Though Azad’s Praises for Prime Minister Modi in reply to his praises for Azad in his farewell speech in Rajaya Sabha could have been called just a goodwill gesture and a demonstration of political generosity that the situation demanded at the farewell session in Rajaya Sabha but the red carpet welcome to Azad at an official event in New Delhi where he was received by a man who defeated him in 2014 Lok Sabha election from Jammu & Kashmir’s Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency sent out a message about his growing proximity with BJP controlled Modi Government. Lending credence to doubts about his growing proximity with Modi led BJP Azad during his address to an even attended by G 23 – group of 23 Congress dissidents called Prime Minister Modi a truthful politician of the present times by giving him credit for taking pride in having risen from a tea seller to the highest executive office of the biggest democracy of the world . In fact Azad is contradicting his own words about the truthfulness of the Prime Minister and his party BJP as his speech in the Rajaya Sabha against the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and the BJP over constitutional moves on erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir state on August 5, 2019 is still fresh in the minds of the people. Azad a die hard critic of the BJP by the dint of his action is fast turning out to be the saffron party’s proxy ally.
Staging a show of strength of the dissident of his own party at Jammu shows Azad’s growing tendency to split the Congress party for the purposes of an alliance with BJP in the state and even the parliamentary elections in coming year but the tragedy is that the attempts of splits in the Congress party have failed almost half a dozen times in the past and dissidents have every time disappeared from political in short span of one and a half years after fighting dissident wars against former Congress Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. What could be next for the dissident led by Azad, only Gh Nabi Azad himself and his fellow dissenters can say.
Azad holding a conclave of dissident leaders in Jammu is totally the reverse of all that what he did to cobbles together even the dissident MLAs of Congress and Devegowda’s Janta Dal (S) for formation of a non BJP government in Karnatka only two years ago. Staging a show of strength of the dissident of his own party at Jammu shows Azad’s growing tendency to split the Congress party for the purposes of an alliance with BJP in the state and even the parliamentary elections in coming year but the tragedy is that the attempts of splits in the Congress party have failed almost half a dozen times in the past and dissidents have every time disappeared from political in short span of one and a half years after fighting dissident wars against former Congress Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. What could be next for the dissident led by Azad, only Gh Nabi Azad himself and his fellow dissenters can say