After rumours of a possible exit, former Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday completely severed ties with the Congress party resigning from all party positions, including its primary membership. The veteran leader in a letter to Sonia Gandhi decried the party has "lost both the will and the ability under the tutelage of the Coterie that runs the AICC to fight for what is right for India."

Before starting a 'Bharat jodo yatra', the leadership should have undertaken a 'Congress jodo yatra', Azad remarked in his five-page letter.

The veteran Congress leader named former party president Rahul Gandhi and said that after January 2013 when he was appointed as Vice President, "the entire Consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him."