New Delhi, Aug 29 (IANS): Days after his resignation from the Congress, Ghulam Nabi Azad has alleged that he was 'forced' to leave the party, and praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for 'showing humanity'.

Speaking to the media here on Monday, he said that the Congress does not respect its leaders and "people don't know about our contribution to the party". While praising the Prime Minister, he said, "I had understood Modi was a crude man as he is not married, does not have children but he has shown his humane side when he spoke in Parliament about the incident that happened with the Gujarati tourists when I was the Chief Minister."

Azad was responding to the allegation levelled against him by the Congress leaders, who had said that "Azad has been Modi-fied' and will join the BJP". He said, "The party is full of illiterates, specially those who are working on clerical posts. Those who know J&K, I can't increase one vote of BJP."

He also said that Rahul Gandhi was not interested in politics despite efforts from the party. "It was Rahul who hugged the Prime Minister in Parliament not me," Azad said, and added that since the letter seeking reform in the Congress was written in 2020, the party has a problem as no one wants to be questioned.

In his resignation letter, Azad had said, "Unfortunately, the situation in the Congress party has reached such a point of no return that now 'proxies' are being propped up to take over the leadership of the party. This experiment is doomed to fail because the party has been so comprehensively destroyed that the situation has become irretrievable. Moreover, the 'chosen one' would be nothing more than a puppet on a string."

He said at the national level the Congress has conceded the political space available to the BJP and state level space to regional parties.

"This all happened because the leadership in the past eight years has tried to foist a non-serious individual at the helm of the party," he alleged without taking the name of Rahul Gandhi.