Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad returned to Jammu on Friday after a year's gap, but it promises to be more than an ordinary homecoming for the leader who retired as a member of Rajya Sabha recently.
The occasion will see Azad, in the company of fellow writers of the 'letter of dissent' such as Anand Sharma, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari and Vivek Tankha, send out a message that they will continue to press their demands made in their letter to the party chief in August last year.
The leaders, by appearing with Azad in the public meetings that are lined up to felicitate him, want to present a picture of solidarity and send out a message that the veteran cannot be written off after his retirement from the Rajya Sabha and his tenure as Leader of Opposition in the upper house coming to an end.
Consequent to Azad's retirement, Mallikarjun Kharge was named by the party as his successor to lead the opposition in the Rajya Sabha even as it is unlikely that the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister would get nominated to the upper house any time soon.
According to sources, Azad and the other leaders would share the stage in public functions in Jammu. Azad would be attending public meetings organised by Gandhi Global Family, Guru Ravi Dass Sabha and Gurjar Desh Charitable Trust. Azad is the chairman of Gandhi Global Family.
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The leaders are planning to organise public meetings in other parts of the country to campaign for 'saving the idea of India' in the face of the BJP's aggressive pursuance of majoritarian politics. There are plans of holding meetings in Ludhiana and Kurukshetra to begin with.
The feeling of bitterness amongst the G-23 has grown recently because of the manner in which Azad was eased out and his deputy in the upper house, Anand Sharma, was overlooked for the post of Leader of Opposition. Azad has also been conspicuously kept out of the seat-sharing negotiations in Tamil Nadu, despite his rich experience of having handled party affairs in the state. Hooda is learnt to be unhappy with the growing importance of AICC Communications Department head Randeep Surjewala and Haryana PCC chief Kumari Selja in the scheme of things.
The move by the dissident leaders is significant since it comes in the backdrop of the Congress Working Committee having decided that the election to the post of party president would be held after the Assembly elections scheduled for April-May are over, and the party declaring that a new president would be in place in June.
