Ghulam Nabi Azad to release autobiography

New Delhi, April 4

(IANS) Democratic Azad Party Chairman and former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad will release his memoirs "Azaad: An Autobiography" on Wednesday.

The book, a chronicle of his journey of 55 years in Congress, will be released by veteran leader Karan Singh.

In the book, Azad, who was then the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has mentioned promptly the issue of abrogation of Article 370 and targeted his former Congress colleague Jairam Ramesh for not joining the protest in the Parliament.

He has also given account of 'G-23' or the group of Congress leaders who had written to then interim party chief Sonia Gandhi, seeking visible and effective leadership and a wide-spread reforms in party affairs.

Though Azad had serious difference with the Congress leadership and quit the party last August to form his own political outfit, he had defended Rahul Gandhi, when he was disqualified from the Lok Sabha.

Azad joined the Congress in the mid 1970s and has held many important positions both in the party and the government. He was a minister in the Union Cabinet in the governments headed by Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Since 1980, Azad was the party General Secretary under every party President during that period.

He was the Chief Minister of J&K from 2005 to 2008.

In his resignation letter addressed to party president Sonia Gandhi, he had noted that he "had an extremely close relationship with your family from late Mrs Indira Gandhi, late Shri Sanjay Gandhi onwards including your late husband (Rajiv Gandhi)".