Jammu, Feb 27 : Senior leaders of the Congress accompanying Ghulam Nabi Azad on Saturday said they are pained to see the party becoming weak with each passing day. The G-23 group of dissenting Congress leaders, as they have come to be known after they expressed serious concern over handling of party affairs in a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi last year, attended a reception offered by an NGO to Ghulam Nabi Azad in Jammu city on Saturday. The reception meeting was called 'Shanti Sammelan' and senior Congress leaders Kapil Sibal, Anand Sharma, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Raj Babbar and Vivek Tankha attended the reception. Commenting on the presence of these leaders with him in Jammu on Saturday, Azad said, "These leaders are here because in the last 5-6 years all of these friends did not speak any less than me in the Parliament over issues of Jammu and Kashmir, its unemployment, stripping off of the statehood, implementation of GST and finishing education and industries in Jammu and Kashmir." Kapil Sibal and Anand Sharma told the meeting that they cannot bear seeing the Congress get weaker with each passing day as they themselves grow older in life. There is now hardly any secret about the fact that these senior dissenting Congress leaders are against the handling of the party affairs the way these are being handled by Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. /IANS