In a major setback to former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, seventeen leaders of the recently floated Democratic Azad Party (DAP), including former deputy chief minister Tara Chand and former Pradesh Congress Committee chief Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed, on Friday returned to the Congress.

The seventeen leaders had joined Azad’s Democratic Azad Party on 26 September 2022 in Jammu and Kashmir, the day the party was formed and later came to be known as Democratic Progressive Party.