One of the senior most Indian politicians, Ghulam Nabi Azad from Jammu and Kashmir has served as a Member of the Indian Parliament for 37 years — for 9 years in the Lok Sabha and 28 years in the Rajya Sabha. He also served as the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir for about 3 years. In 2022, over difference with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, Azad resigned from the Indian National Congress after serving the party for 49 years and launched his own Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP). As the first guest in this programme series, he spoke in detail about his life, education and struggles in politics. He complained that politics in Jammu and Kashmir has been perpetually “hostage to sentiments”.
In this PART-2 of the podcast, Azad asserted that he had launched the DPAP as an Indian national party but after he was ditched by most of the 23 Congress ‘rebels’ who had written a joint letter to Sonia Gandhi in 2020, the DPAP was now a purely regional party based in and restricted to only his some state of Jammu and Kashmir. He said that the DPAP’s decision of supporting the pro-Plebiscite independent candidate Engineer Rashid against National Conference’s Omar Abdullah, Peoples Conference’s Sajad Lone and Peoples Democratic Party’s Mir Mohammad Fayaz in the recent Lok Sabha elections from Baramulla had been pushed by the party’s “local leadership” after it perceived the entire “sentiment vote” going to the imprisoned contest fighting from Delhi’s Tihar Jail. Azad said that millions of the Kashmiris had hit the streets in protest when his government allotted a small piece of land for temporary use of the Amarnath pilgrims in 2008 and brought down his government but wondered how and why the entire Valley of Kashmir had remained calm and quiet when the whole erstwhile State was “captured” in August 2019.
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TALKISTAN is being operated by a team of professional print and television journalists headed by senior journalist Ahmed Ali Fayyaz who has been a full time professional journalist with different news and broadcasting organisations for the last 35 years. This is a completely independent media channel which does not seek or accept any kind of support from any political party, government, State or non-State actors. Our podcasts with the most eminent personalities in different fields will cover politics, governance, development, terrorism, economy, trade and tourism, industry, culture, sports, film and mass media, education, science and technology especially medical science.
Views expressed by the guests are exclusively their own and not essentially of the channel TALKISTAN or anyone associated with it. All legal issues are subject to the jurisdiction of the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court at Srinagar.
LEGAL ADVISORS
Advocate Vasundhara Pathak Masoodi, Supreme Court of India
Sr Advocate Jehangir Iqbal Ganai, Jammu and Kashmir High Court
