New Delhi: Ghulam Nabi Azad's quitting has left the Congress poorer following the high profile exit of leaders including Kapil Sibal and Ashwani Kumar as the party is struggling to maintain its waning support base.
Still reeling from the shock, the Congress leadership called Azad's exit unfortunate and questioned the timing of the decision.
The veteran leader left the party after attacking Rahul Gandhi for "childish behaviour", "glaring immaturity" and surrounding himself with a "coterie of inexperienced sycophants".
Congress MP Jairam Ramesh called Azad's decision "most regrettable" saying that it happened when Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and the entire Congress organisation was fighting the BJP on issues of price rice, unemployment and polarisation.
However, Azad earlier in his resignation letter to Sonia Gandhi blamed Rahul Gandhi for the Congress' failure in 2014 polls.
Pulling no punches, he declared the Congress is past the point of no return as it is "comprehensively destroyed" and called Sonia Gandhi 'nominal figurehead" and criticised what he called "remote control model" of its functioning.
Azad, 73, said that Congress has ceded its political space to BJP and regional parties after inducting "non-serious" individual at the leadership.
After Rahul Gandhi emerged as Vice President of the party, the entire "consultative mechanism" that existed in the party was destroyed, he blamed.
Subsequently, senior and veteran leaders were sidelined and the party was run by what he said "new coterie of inexperienced sycophants".
He pointed out Rahul Gandhi's tearing up of a government ordnance in front of media in 2013 as a token of his "immaturity".
The tearing up incident he referred to had taken place during the UPA tenure when Rahul Gandhi destroyed a special order to spare convicted lawmakers from disqualification.
Azad was a member of the G-23 or the group of 23 "dissenters" that wrote to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 for a complete overhaul of the organization.