Two days after it expelled senior leaders Tara Chand, Dr Manohar Lal Sharma and Balwan Singh for alleged anti-party activities, the Ghulam Nabi Azad-led Democratic Azad Party (DAP) on Saturday suffered a major setback as 126 of its leaders and workers left the party in protest. Amid the crisis in the DAP, the Congress said its doors were open for “secular-minded people”.
Prominent among the leaders who quit Azad’s party on Saturday are Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association’s president MK Bhardwaj, a senior advocate, and the DAP’s Jammu district president Vinod Sharma. Both were considered Azad loyalists. All those who quit the DAP appeared with the three expelled leaders before the media here.
Tara Chand who was elected MLA from Khour three times in a row — 1996, 2002 and 2008 — has been a Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and Deputy Chief Minister of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir while Sharma is a former minister and Balwan Singh is a former MLA. The notice expelling the three did not elaborate on the anti-party activities they indulged in.
With this, DAP not only lost a prominent Dalit face in Tara Chand but also upper-caste leaders with a considerable support base in Jammu. These three were always on Azad’s side of Azad during their time in the Congress, often to the dislike of the party’s high command.
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According to sources close to the three expelled leaders, more people are likely to follow suit. Describing their expulsion as the worst kind of dictatorship ever seen, Tara Chand told the media that Azad opposed the All India Congress Committee (AICC) on many occasions but no one expelled him from the party. “Here (in J&K), we opposed the PCC president (GA Mir) on his instigation, but no one even served us a notice,” he said, adding that there had to be some inner-party democracy.
Lashing out at Azad, Tara Chand asked where the party was. “What is its registration number, symbol, registered name or office? Still, you claim to have expelled us when the party does not exist at all,” he said.
Admitting that it was a mistake to leave the Congress and join Azad because of their old association with him, the former Deputy CM said that there were only 64 in the DAP when they joined him. “Today, 126 people have left him,” he added.
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Tara Chand accused Azad of working in a manner that divided people with “secular ideology” to benefit a particular party. He said those who want to join the BJP, should do it straightway instead of beating about the bush and “misleading” people.
Asked about their plan, Tara Chand said they would consult their supporters. They said that they would join the Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Rahul Gandhi when it enters Jammu and Kashmir next month.
Meanwhile, J&K Congress president Vikar Rasool Wani said the party’s doors were open for “secular-minded” people and closed for those with a communal mindset. He hit out at Azad, who had an acrimonious split with the Congress in August, and termed the DAP a branch of the BJP that is “collapsing under its weight”.
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“Our party’s doors are open for them and a decision to reinduct them into the Congress will be taken at an appropriate time,” Wani said. He claimed that those who had joined the DAP felt “ditched by the fake slogans of the Azad-led group, which is yet to be registered with or recognised by the Election Commission.
He said all like-minded people, NGOs, and political parties were welcome to join the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Wani also extended support to Kashmiri Pandit migrant employees and Jammu-based reserved category staffers who are on a protest strike here since May demanding relocation outside the Valley following targeted killings by terrorists.
(With inputs from PTI)
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