Following his exit from the Congress party, Ghulam Nabi Azad said that he would soon launch his own party, and that its first unit would be set up in Jammu and Kashmir.

“I am in no hurry as of now to launch a national party but keeping in mind that elections are likely to be held in Jammu and Kashmir, I have decided to launch a unit there soon,” Azad was quoted saying by PTI on Friday.

Meanwhile Azad’s close confidant G M Saroori, who too resigned in solidarity, said that the party’s first unit in J&K would come up in a fortnight, adding that the the restoration of the pre-August 5, 2019 position of Jammu and Kashmir will be part of the party’s manifesto. The Centre in 2019 had revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and bifurcated the erstwhile state into two Union territories — Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

Also Read: Ghulam Nabi Azad quits Congress, blames Rahul Gandhi in hard-hitting letter

Saroori also said that Azad will not join the BJP as their leader was ideologically secular.

The former vice-president of the J-K unit of the Congress, told PTI that Azad was coming to Jammu on September 4 to hold consultations before the launch of the party.

In a five-page letter to interim party president Sonia Gandhi on Friday, Azad wrote that the party was running under the instructions of a small group of All India Congress Committee leaders.

Also Read: Congress has reached a point of no return: 10 big takeaways from Ghulam Nabi Azad’s explosive letter to Sonia Gandhi

Hitting out at Rahul Gandhi, Azad wrote that when the former Congress president entered politics and became the party’s vice-president in 2013, he demolished the entire “consultative mechanism”. “All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the party,” he wrote in the letter.

Azad’s exit dealt a blow to the Congress in the Jammu region where it is struggling to find its feet after the entry of the BJP. Within hours of his resignation, two former Jammu and Kashmir ministers of the Congress — G M Saroori and R S Chib — and four ex-MLAs/MLCs also quit the party, The Indian Express reported.