The Evening Wrap: Ghulam Nabi Azad quits Cong saying Rahul destroyed party’s consultative mechanism

Rahul Gandhi has demolished all the consultative mechanism in the Congress and the “remote control” culture that damaged the UPA was brought into the party, said Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad in his resignation letter on Friday that ended his nearly 50-year-old association with the party. Launching a scathing attack against Gandhi in his resignation letter sent to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Azad alleged that she was merely “a figurehead and all decisions were taken by Rahul Gandhi or his personal assistant and security guards” and asserted that the Congress had reached this state because it wanted to foist a “non-serious” individual on the party for the past eight years. Responding to the developments, Congress general secretary in-charge of communication Jairam Ramesh said it is “most unfortunate and regrettable” that Azad chose to send this letter when the entire Congress was taking on the BJP government on the issue of prices, social polarisation and political divisions through its Bharat Jodo Yatra and Mehangai Par Halla Bol rally. A few Congress leaders, who chose to be anonymous, linked Azad’s ‘letter bomb’ to the upcoming Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), in which he would participate by floating his regional party and could eventually tie up with the BJP. In his letter, however, Azad cited insults and sidelining of seniors by Gandhi and his coterie as the reason for his departure. “...unfortunately after the entry of Shri Rahul Gandhi into politics and particularly after January, 2013, when he was appointed as Vice President by you (Sonia Gandhi), the entire Consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him,” he said, adding, “All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and new coterie of Inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the Party,” Azad said in his resignation letter. “Worse still the remote control model that demolished the institutional integrity of the UPA government now got applied to the Indian National Congress. While you are just a nominal figurehead all the important decisions were being taken by Shri Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs,” he added. In a no-holds-barred attack, the former Leader of the Opposition also pointed the political slide of the Congress under the Gandhis. “Under your stewardship since 2014 and subsequently that of Shri Rahul Gandhi, the INC has lost two Lok Sabha elections in a humiliating manner. It has lost 39 out of the 49 assembly elections held between 2014-2022,” he said, adding that the party has ceded space to the BJP at the Centre and regional parties in States. Azad also blamed Gandhi for the slide of the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government and cited the incident where he had torn an Ordinance as a “glaring example of his immaturity”. “This one single action more than anything else contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA Goverment in 2014 that was at the receiving end of a campaign of calumny and insinuation from a combination of the forces of the right wing and certain unscrupulous corporate interests,” he said. Azad said that ever since he, along with 22 of his colleagues, had written to Gandhi to suggest reforms, the coterie around Gandhi targeted him and even carried out a mock funeral in Jammu, and attacked his former colleague Kapil Sibal’s house. The former Congress stalwart claimed that the party has reached a point of no return as “proxies” are put up for leadership roles and called the upcoming organisational elections “a farce and a sham”. “In fact, before starting Bharath Jodo Yatra, the leadership should have undertaken a Congress Jodo exercise across the country. It is therefore with great regret and an extremely leaden heart that I have decided to sever my half a century old association with the Indian National Congress and hereby resign from all my positions including the primary membership of the Indian National Congress,” Azad wrote. The Congress on Friday called senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s resignation “unfortunate” and termed the timing “awful”, saying it has come at a time when the party is engaged in combating the BJP on various issues. “Ghulam Nabi Azad was a senior leader of the Congress. It is saddening that when the party fighting against inflation and polarisation, he decided to quit. It is most unfortunate and regrettable that this has happened when the entire organisation is engaged in combating the BJP on issues of price rise and unemployment,” the Congress said. Party General Secretary Jairam Ramesh also questioned the contents of the letter written by Azad. “Contents of the letter is not factual, timing is awful,” he said. There will be at least one Constitution Bench in Supreme Court throughout the year: CJI-designate U.U. Lalit Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, who is going to take oath as the 49th Chief Justice of India on August 27, 2022, gave an assurance that there will be at least one Constitution Bench functioning throughout the year in the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice-designate promised clarity and transparency in the urgent listing of cases in the apex court. Justice Lalit said a clear-cut mechanism would be in place to allow lawyers to mention urgent matters, which includes bail petitions, etc., before the respective Benches for early listing. He said he has already discussed these issues with the Supreme Court Bar leaders. The sweeping changes would help the judges identify, hear and provide relief in cases which need their urgent attention. It would also help litigants and lawyers to avoid delay in getting their cases listed for hearing before judges due to the long-winded processes of the Supreme Court Registry. Mornings in the Supreme Court are witness to crowds of lawyers trying to convince judges to put up their cases for hearing. Often, many of these cases require urgent attention as they concern the right of personal liberty or property of common citizens. Justice Lalit’s initiative comes at a time when the Supreme Court’s pendency has crossed over 71,000 from a little over 55,000 in 2017. This is despite the fact that the sanctioned judicial strength of the court was increased to 34 judges in August 2019. A steady rise in arrears regardless of the periodic increase in judicial strength has been a constant phenomenon since 1950. The outgoing Chief Justice N.V. Ramana, on his last working day, apologised for not being able to list all the pending matters. Chief Justice Ramana said the court has been firefighting pendency, which rose alarmingly during the pandemic months. “The only way out for this is to reform the functioning of the system. We need to deploy modern technological tools and Artificial Intelligence to find a lasting solution. Even though we tried developing some modules, because of compatibility and security issues, we could not make much progress. Due to COVID emergency, the priority was running the courts… Unfortunately, during the past 16 months of my tenure as CJI, full-fledged hearing was possible only for about 50 days,” Chief Justice Ramana told lawyers in the court on his last working day. SC to reconsider judgment that making promises in election manifestos is not ‘corrupt practice’ The Supreme Court on Friday decided to reconsider a 2013 judgment, which held that promises in the election manifesto do not constitute a “corrupt practice” under the poll law. A Bench led by the Chief Justice of India, N.V. Ramana, ordered a three-judge Bench to be set up to review the court’s earlier position that such pre-poll promises made by political parties to entice voters do not fall within the ambit of Section 123 (corrupt practices) under the Representation of the People (RP) Act. The S. Subramaniam Balaji judgment, delivered by a two-judge Bench, had observed that “although the law is obvious that the promises in the election manifesto cannot be construed as ‘corrupt practice’ under Section 123 of RP Act, the reality cannot be ruled out that distribution of freebies of any kind, undoubtedly, influences all people”. On Friday, Chief Justice Ramana said the three-judge Bench should consider whether an “enforceable” order can be passed to stop political parties in power from promising and distributing “irrational freebies”, completely divorced from actual welfare schemes, using public money in order to merely “capture vote banks”. The court said the three-judge Bench should also deliberate if an expert body can be formed to independently study and make recommendations against the distribution of largesse at the cost of the national economy and public welfare. It was Chief Justice Ramana’s Bench which initiated the idea of forming an expert committee to examine the problem of free gifts and prepare a “White Paper” suggesting the way forward. The court had recently even urged the Centre to call an all party meeting to discuss freebies. But the debate before Chief Justice Ramana’s Bench reached a stalemate when several political parties intervened to argue that “not all promises are freebies” and welfare measures rolled out for public good cannot be equated with “freebies”. The parties had dissuaded the court from “gagging” a welfare state from following the Directive Principles of State Policy and distribute benefits to the people. “Ultimately, it appears that the issues raised by the parties require a comprehensive hearing before orders can be passed,” Chief Justice Ramana noted in the court’s order on Friday. The court ordered the freebies case to be listed before the new three-judge Bench in four weeks. Delhi Assembly Deputy Speaker Rakhi Birla marshals out BJP MLAs for entire day of session Delhi Assembly Deputy Speaker Rakhi Birla on August 26 marshalled out all BJP MLAs for the entire day of the special session over a video recording by saffron party legislator Ajay Mahawar. Birla asked Mahawar if he made a video recording of the Assembly proceedings by going against the laws. “Have you done the video recording? If you have, then why should your phone not be seized? This is against the laws of the House,” she said. Mahawar and his party MLAs did not respond to Birla’s questions. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the BJP MLAs got into a war of words over the issue. Following this, Birla said the BJP MLAs have wasted the time of the House and marshalled them out. BJP MLAs came out of the House and stood near the Gandhi statue on the Assembly premises and raised slogans demanding Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia’s arrest and removal from Cabinet over the controversy surrounding the Excise Policy 2021-22. Four Indian-American women racially abused, assaulted in Texas Four Indian-American women have been racially abused and smacked by a Mexican-American woman in the U.S. State of Texas. She hurled racist slurs at them that they are “ruining” America and should “go back to India”. The incident took place on Wednesday, August 24, 2022 night in a parking lot in Dallas, Texas. The woman, who has now been arrested, is seen in the video identifying herself as a Mexican-American and assaulting a group of Indian-Americans. “I hate you Indian. All these Indians come to America because they want a better life,” Esmeralda Upton is seen saying in the video. The video shows her telling the group of women to “Go back to India. You... people are ruining this country,” the CBS News reported. The video has now gone viral and sent shock waves among the Indian-American community across the United States. The video shows Upton using racial slurs, and at one point physically smacking at least two of the women. The person who posted this video wrote, “this incident occurred in Dallas, Texas after my mom and her three friends went to dinner”. The mom is seen contesting the arguments made by the Mexican-American woman and requesting her not to make racial slurs. At one point in time, the Mexican-American woman, who says she was born in the United States, is seen assaulting the mom and her other friends as well. “Everywhere I... go, you Indians are... everywhere,” she is seen screaming in the video. “If life was so great in India, why are you here,” she shouted while inserting the f-word and suddenly started assaulting the four Indian women. Plano Police Detectives arrested Esmeralda Upton of Plano on Thursday afternoon. She has been charged with assault, bodily injury and terroristic threats and is being held on a total bond amount of $10,000. “This is so scary. She actually had a gun and wanted to shoot because these Indian-American women had accents while speaking English. Disgusting. This awful woman needs to be prosecuted for a hate crime,” Reema Rasool said on Twitter. This incident is currently under investigation by the Plano Police Department’s Crime Against Persons Unit as a hate crime. Groups in North Texas with ties to the South Asian American community condemned the attack and said they were relieved that a suspect had been arrested. Urmeet Juneja, president of the India Association of North Texas, said he thinks North Texas has largely been a welcoming and safe place for people who are of South Asian descent, The Dallas Morning News reported. “We are happy that law enforcement has taken swift action and arrested this person. Still, we also think that they should conduct a fair investigation and get to the bottom of the matter and take this hate crime investigation to its conclusion,” Juneja said. “The events in Plano remind me of stories my parents and their friends told me over and over in the wake of 9/11 — of fellow Americans seeing them as others and enemies,” said Saatvik Ahluwalia, a spokesman for Asian Texans for Justice was quoted as saying by the report. Chanda Parbhoo, executive director of South Asian American Voter Engagement of Texas, said in a statement: ”While we are relieved our community members are safe, listening to their cries for help from the verbal, physical, and racist abuse this woman was unleashing in that dark parking lot is infuriating.” In Brief The national parties have collected more than ₹15,077.97 crore from unknown sources between 2004-05 and 2020-21, an analysis by the poll rights body — Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), showed. The total income of national and regional parties from unknown sources for 2020-21 stands at ₹690.67 crore. ADR considered eight national parties and 27 regional parties for this analysis. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow [logo] The Evening Wrap 26 AUGUST 2022 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( Ghulam Nabi Azad quits Congress saying Rahul Gandhi destroyed party’s consultative mechanism [Rahul Gandhi has demolished all the consultative mechanism in the Congress and the “remote control” culture]( that damaged the UPA was brought into the party, said Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad in his resignation letter on Friday that ended his nearly 50-year-old association with the party. Launching a scathing attack against Gandhi in his resignation letter sent to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Azad alleged that she was merely “a figurehead and all decisions were taken by Rahul Gandhi or his personal assistant and security guards” and asserted that the Congress had reached this state because it wanted to foist a “non-serious” individual on the party for the past eight years. [File photo senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad with party leader Rahul Gandhi. ] Responding to the developments, Congress general secretary in-charge of communication Jairam Ramesh said it is “most unfortunate and regrettable” that Azad chose to send this letter when the entire Congress was taking on the BJP government on the issue of prices, social polarisation and political divisions through its Bharat Jodo Yatra and Mehangai Par Halla Bol rally. A few Congress leaders, who chose to be anonymous, linked Azad’s ‘letter bomb’ to the upcoming Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), in which he would participate by floating his regional party and could eventually tie up with the BJP. In his letter, however, Azad cited insults and sidelining of seniors by Gandhi and his coterie as the reason for his departure. “...unfortunately after the entry of Shri Rahul Gandhi into politics and particularly after January, 2013, when he was appointed as Vice President by you (Sonia Gandhi), the entire Consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him,” he said, adding, “All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and new coterie of Inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the Party,” Azad said in his resignation letter. “Worse still the remote control model that demolished the institutional integrity of the UPA government now got applied to the Indian National Congress. While you are just a nominal figurehead all the important decisions were being taken by Shri Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs,” he added. In a no-holds-barred attack, the former Leader of the Opposition also pointed the political slide of the Congress under the Gandhis. “Under your stewardship since 2014 and subsequently that of Shri Rahul Gandhi, the INC has lost two Lok Sabha elections in a humiliating manner. It has lost 39 out of the 49 assembly elections held between 2014-2022,” he said, adding that the party has ceded space to the BJP at the Centre and regional parties in States. Azad also blamed Gandhi for the slide of the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government and cited the incident where he had torn an Ordinance as a “glaring example of his immaturity”. “This one single action more than anything else contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA Goverment in 2014 that was at the receiving end of a campaign of calumny and insinuation from a combination of the forces of the right wing and certain unscrupulous corporate interests,” he said. Azad said that ever since he, along with 22 of his colleagues, had written to Gandhi to suggest reforms, the coterie around Gandhi targeted him and even carried out a mock funeral in Jammu, and attacked his former colleague Kapil Sibal’s house. The former Congress stalwart claimed that the party has reached a point of no return as “proxies” are put up for leadership roles and called the upcoming organisational elections “a farce and a sham”. “In fact, before starting Bharath Jodo Yatra, the leadership should have undertaken a Congress Jodo exercise across the country. It is therefore with great regret and an extremely leaden heart that I have decided to sever my half a century old association with the Indian National Congress and hereby resign from all my positions including the primary membership of the Indian National Congress,” Azad wrote. The Congress on Friday called senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s resignation “unfortunate” and termed the timing “awful”, saying it has come at a time when the party is engaged in combating the BJP on various issues. “Ghulam Nabi Azad was a senior leader of the Congress. It is saddening that when the party fighting against inflation and polarisation, he decided to quit. It is most unfortunate and regrettable that this has happened when the entire organisation is engaged in combating the BJP on issues of price rise and unemployment,” the Congress said. Party General Secretary Jairam Ramesh also questioned the contents of the letter written by Azad. “Contents of the letter is not factual, timing is awful,” he said. There will be at least one Constitution Bench in Supreme Court throughout the year: CJI-designate U.U. Lalit [Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, who is going to take oath as the 49th Chief Justice of India on August 27, 2022]( gave an assurance that there will be at least one Constitution Bench functioning throughout the year in the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice-designate promised clarity and transparency in the urgent listing of cases in the apex court. Justice Lalit said a clear-cut mechanism would be in place to allow lawyers to mention urgent matters, which includes bail petitions, etc., before the respective Benches for early listing. He said he has already discussed these issues with the Supreme Court Bar leaders. The sweeping changes would help the judges identify, hear and provide relief in cases which need their urgent attention. It would also help litigants and lawyers to avoid delay in getting their cases listed for hearing before judges due to the long-winded processes of the Supreme Court Registry. Mornings in the Supreme Court are witness to crowds of lawyers trying to convince judges to put up their cases for hearing. Often, many of these cases require urgent attention as they concern the right of personal liberty or property of common citizens. Justice Lalit’s initiative comes at a time when the Supreme Court’s pendency has crossed over 71,000 from a little over 55,000 in 2017. This is despite the fact that the sanctioned judicial strength of the court was increased to 34 judges in August 2019. A steady rise in arrears regardless of the periodic increase in judicial strength has been a constant phenomenon since 1950. The outgoing Chief Justice N.V. Ramana, on his last working day, apologised for not being able to list all the pending matters. Chief Justice Ramana said the court has been firefighting pendency, which rose alarmingly during the pandemic months. “The only way out for this is to reform the functioning of the system. We need to deploy modern technological tools and Artificial Intelligence to find a lasting solution. Even though we tried developing some modules, because of compatibility and security issues, we could not make much progress. Due to COVID emergency, the priority was running the courts… Unfortunately, during the past 16 months of my tenure as CJI, full-fledged hearing was possible only for about 50 days,” Chief Justice Ramana told lawyers in the court on his last working day. SC to reconsider judgment that making promises in election manifestos is not ‘corrupt practice’ The [Supreme Court on Friday decided to reconsider a 2013 judgment, which held that promises in the election manifesto]( do not constitute a “corrupt practice” under the poll law. A Bench led by the Chief Justice of India, N.V. Ramana, ordered a three-judge Bench to be set up to review the court’s earlier position that such pre-poll promises made by political parties to entice voters do not fall within the ambit of Section 123 (corrupt practices) under the Representation of the People (RP) Act. [Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana being garlanded during the felicitation programme by the Supreme Court Employees’ Welfare Association, in New Delhi.] The S. Subramaniam Balaji judgment, delivered by a two-judge Bench, had observed that “although the law is obvious that the promises in the election manifesto cannot be construed as ‘corrupt practice’ under Section 123 of RP Act, the reality cannot be ruled out that distribution of freebies of any kind, undoubtedly, influences all people”. On Friday, Chief Justice Ramana said the three-judge Bench should consider whether an “enforceable” order can be passed to stop political parties in power from promising and distributing “irrational freebies”, completely divorced from actual welfare schemes, using public money in order to merely “capture vote banks”. The court said the three-judge Bench should also deliberate if an expert body can be formed to independently study and make recommendations against the distribution of largesse at the cost of the national economy and public welfare. It was Chief Justice Ramana’s Bench which initiated the idea of forming an expert committee to examine the problem of free gifts and prepare a “White Paper” suggesting the way forward. The court had recently even urged the Centre to call an all party meeting to discuss freebies. But the debate before Chief Justice Ramana’s Bench reached a stalemate when several political parties intervened to argue that “not all promises are freebies” and welfare measures rolled out for public good cannot be equated with “freebies”. The parties had dissuaded the court from “gagging” a welfare state from following the Directive Principles of State Policy and distribute benefits to the people. “Ultimately, it appears that the issues raised by the parties require a comprehensive hearing before orders can be passed,” Chief Justice Ramana noted in the court’s order on Friday. The court ordered the freebies case to be listed before the new three-judge Bench in four weeks. Delhi Assembly Deputy Speaker Rakhi Birla marshals out BJP MLAs for entire day of session [Delhi Assembly Deputy Speaker Rakhi Birla on August 26 marshalled out all BJP MLAs]( for the entire day of the special session over a video recording by saffron party legislator Ajay Mahawar. Birla asked Mahawar if he made a video recording of the Assembly proceedings by going against the laws. “Have you done the video recording? If you have, then why should your phone not be seized? This is against the laws of the House,” she said. Mahawar and his party MLAs did not respond to Birla’s questions. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the BJP MLAs got into a war of words over the issue. Following this, Birla said the BJP MLAs have wasted the time of the House and marshalled them out. BJP MLAs came out of the House and stood near the Gandhi statue on the Assembly premises and raised slogans demanding Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia’s arrest and removal from Cabinet over the controversy surrounding the Excise Policy 2021-22. Four Indian-American women racially abused, assaulted in Texas [Four Indian-American women have been racially abused and smacked by a Mexican-American woman]( in the U.S. State of Texas. She hurled racist slurs at them that they are “ruining” America and should “go back to India”. The incident took place on Wednesday, August 24, 2022 night in a parking lot in Dallas, Texas. The woman, who has now been arrested, is seen in the video identifying herself as a Mexican-American and assaulting a group of Indian-Americans. “I hate you Indian. All these Indians come to America because they want a better life,” Esmeralda Upton is seen saying in the video. The video shows her telling the group of women to “Go back to India. You... people are ruining this country,” the CBS News reported. The video has now gone viral and sent shock waves among the Indian-American community across the United States. The video shows Upton using racial slurs, and at one point physically smacking at least two of the women. The person who posted this video wrote, “this incident occurred in Dallas, Texas after my mom and her three friends went to dinner”. The mom is seen contesting the arguments made by the Mexican-American woman and requesting her not to make racial slurs. At one point in time, the Mexican-American woman, who says she was born in the United States, is seen assaulting the mom and her other friends as well. “Everywhere I ... go, you Indians are ... everywhere,” she is seen screaming in the video. “If life was so great in India, why are you here,” she shouted while inserting the f-word and suddenly started assaulting the four Indian women. Plano Police Detectives arrested Esmeralda Upton of Plano on Thursday afternoon. She has been charged with assault, bodily injury and terroristic threats and is being held on a total bond amount of $10,000. “This is so scary. She actually had a gun and wanted to shoot because these Indian-American women had accents while speaking English. Disgusting. This awful woman needs to be prosecuted for a hate crime,” Reema Rasool said on Twitter. This incident is currently under investigation by the Plano Police Department’s Crime Against Persons Unit as a hate crime. Groups in North Texas with ties to the South Asian American community condemned the attack and said they were relieved that a suspect had been arrested. Urmeet Juneja, president of the India Association of North Texas, said he thinks North Texas has largely been a welcoming and safe place for people who are of South Asian descent, The Dallas Morning News reported. “We are happy that law enforcement has taken swift action and arrested this person. Still, we also think that they should conduct a fair investigation and get to the bottom of the matter and take this hate crime investigation to its conclusion,” Juneja said. “The events in Plano remind me of stories my parents and their friends told me over and over in the wake of 9/11 — of fellow Americans seeing them as others and enemies,” said Saatvik Ahluwalia, a spokesman for Asian Texans for Justice was quoted as saying by the report. Chanda Parbhoo, executive director of South Asian American Voter Engagement of Texas, said in a statement: ”While we are relieved our community members are safe, listening to their cries for help from the verbal, physical, and racist abuse this woman was unleashing in that dark parking lot is infuriating.” In Brief The national parties have collected more than ₹15,077.97 crore from unknown sources between 2004-05 and 2020-21, an analysis by the poll rights body — Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), showed. The total income of national and regional parties from unknown sources for 2020-21 stands at ₹690.67 crore. ADR considered eight national parties and 27 regional parties for this analysis. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow  Today’s Top Picks [[Data | How States compare in agri-production: Punjab and Haryana dominate] Data | How States compare in agri-production: Punjab and Haryana dominate]( [[Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s $1 billion art collection to be sold in largest art auction ever] Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s $1 billion art collection to be sold in largest art auction ever]( [[Watch | How is the Chief Justice of India appointed?] Watch | How is the Chief Justice of India appointed?]( [[‘Delhi Crime’ Season 2 series review: Chasing the moon’s shadow] ‘Delhi Crime’ Season 2 series review: Chasing the moon’s shadow]( Copyright @ 2022, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. 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