NEW DELHI, Aug 26 (Reuters): A veteran leader of India's main opposition Congress party quit on Friday, issuing a scathing resignation letter in which he blamed the scion of the influential Gandhi family for the decline of the party that dominated Indian politics for decades.
After ruling for much of India's post-independence period, the 137-year-old party, which traditionally promoted a secular state, has floundered against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The BJP has won two successive general elections since 2014 with landslides and looks well-placed to win the next one, due by 2024.
Ghulam Nabi Azad, a former federal minister who also ruled the disputed region of Kashmir, said he was leaving Congress after nearly 50 years and blamed the party's de facto second-in-command, Rahul Gandhi, the son of party chief Sonia Gandhi, for its failings.
"Unfortunately after the entry of Shri Rahul Gandhi into politics and particularly after January, 2013 when he was appointed as vice president by you, the entire consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him," Azad said in a letter to Sonia, using an honorific for her son.
"All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party."
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