Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Friday said he was pained over the resignation of senior colleague Ghulam Nabi Azad, whom he said, the party gave everything, sending him to the Rajya Sabha five times besides making him a Union minister and also Jammu and Kashmir chief minister.
He said Azad resigned from the Congress at a time when party president Sonia Gandhi is undergoing treatment abroad.
The Rajya Sabha MP said Azad, a prominent member of the 'G23' dissident group in the Congress, got so much from the party during his decades-long political career.
I and Ghulam Nabi Azad entered politics at the same time. He lost the 1977 Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir and his deposit was forfeited. We are of the same age and have good relations and today we have. But I am pained over his decision.
"The party gave him everything, he was unable to win from J&K so he was fielded from Maharashtra. Twice he was elected to the Lok Sabha and was given five terms in the Rajya Sabha, which means 30 years," Singh said in a statement.
Azad on Friday ended his five-decade association with the Congress, terming it comprehensively destroyed and lashing out at former party president Rahul Gandhi for demolishing its entire consultative mechanism.