The Nation: Congress; It's Me Or Nothing

With an emotion-packed speech Sonia bulldozes her way through the AICC and gains total control. But the rebels have dented the party's base.

All Yesmen: Sonia made it clear there was no place for doubters in the party.

The Talkatora Indoor Stadium in the capital is one of the relics of the late Rajiv Gandhi's apprentice years in politics, having come up under his supervision during the 1982 Asiad construction boom. If the stadium contributed to the launching of Rajiv as a political manager, it played no less a role last week in the re-launching of his widow, Sonia Gandhi, as the Congress' undisputed prime ministerial candidate for the general election scheduled later this year.

DOUBLE-TROUBLE

The exit of Pawar and Sangma has dented the party's base in two regions

Maharashtra
ť While Pawar mustered 29 of the 78 Congress MLAs at his tea-party, Sonia's representative Madhavrao Scindia drew only 11 at Tilak Bhavan.
ť Pawar got the loyalist chief whip 'sacked', so the anti-defection law works in his favour.
ť A split could mean the party loses allies like SP, RPI and PWP.

North -- East
ť In Meghalaya, UDP-Congress coalition faces imminent danger as 21 of the 25 Congress MLAs support Sangma.
ť Arunachal CM Mukut Mithi skipped the AICC session. Gave only qualified support to Sonia.
ť Nagaland Chief Minister
S.C. Jamir, in his AICC speech, echoed the rebels' sentiments, an ominous portent for Sonia.

Since her formal anointment as the Congress president in April last year at an AICC session at the Siri Fort Auditorium, yet another memento of Rajiv's pre-Asiad build-up, Sonia's status as the shadow prime minister was not publicly doubted within the party. It is a different matter that the BJP kept its knife sharpened on the issue of her foreign origin, and Mulayam Singh Yadav refused to support her as prime minister last month, citing nationality as a factor. But nobody in the party dared raise this uncomfortable subject. Until May 15, when the rebellious trio of Sharad Pawar, Purno A. Sangma and Tariq Anwar mustered courage and challenged her right to bid for the top job.

After the Pawar rebellion, Sonia had two choices. She could either bid adieu to the quest for power and seek an honourable retreat by resuming her 1998 role as the party's saintly vote-catcher. Alternatively, she could leverage her colossal dynastic clout to jettison the rebels and clear the course for herself in the prime ministerial sweepstakes. After some confusing signals, she plonked for the latter course. With a generous helping hand from the party. In the eight days between her resignation and its withdrawal, the party successfully generated a roadful of sympathy near 10 Janpath. There were enough tears to wash away doubts about her seriousness to step out.

Sonia's 25-minute speech at the AICC session, delivered in slow but uncharacteristically accent-free Hindi, was a clinching blend of emotion and authority. "Those who question my Indianness will get the reply not from me but from the people of this country: it will be a crushing reply." Underneath the hardsell was the attempt to reposition herself before the elections. If Pawar and his cohorts had calculated that she would finally get trapped by the fact of her birth, she had the punter's cheek to throw the card back at her opponents. She gambled that her nationality would be a non-issue before the electorate. That may be playing blind, but it raises the stakes on both sides of the table. The stakes rise more for her opponents, notably the BJP, for it never thought that the nationality debate would be the only poll issue. Sonia seems intent on forcing their hands.

Which is why she is not taking the revolt within the Congress ranks too seriously. The damage-control exercise after Pawar's formation of a new party, the Nationalist Congress Party, was set on a low key. The AICC general secretary in charge of Maharashtra, Madhavrao Scindia, acted tough when he authorised the expulsion from the party of 20 of the 29 MLAs who attended a tea-party at Pawar's house. In reality, however, it was a fire-fighting exercise as the Pawar group, which is in a majority in the Congress Legislature Party, had already begun its offensive by sacking the loyalist chief whip, Rohidas Patil. The official Congress nevertheless retained the big names in the state leadership, including former chief ministers S.B. Chavan and A.R. Antulay and state unit chief Prataprao Bhosale and his predecessor Ranjit Deshmukh. However, as a fence-sitting Maharashtra Congress leader piquantly observed, "Sonia has got the signboards but Pawar has kept the shops."

While Scindia's role was rather limited because of the political weight that Pawar still carries in Maharashtra, the seven north-eastern states on which Sangma casts his shadow have apparently fallen in line. Sangma's home state, Meghalaya, is an exception. Here the former Lok Sabha Speaker commands the support of 21 of the 25 Congress MLAs and can conceivably pull down the UDP-Congress coalition Government. Also significant is the fact that B.B. Dutta, Rajya Sabha member from Meghalaya and a Bengali leader of the state, has cast his lot with the rebels.

But the revolt has not significantly dented the Congress base in the largest of the north-eastern states, Assam, which accounts for 14 of the region's 25 constituencies (excluding Sikkim). The leaders of Assam's non-ethnic community groups -- Muslims, tribals, Nepalis and Bengalis -- have remained with the establishment. Former minister Santosh Mohan Dev, a prominent leader of the Bengali-dominated Cachar district and a close friend of Sangma, has put loyalty above friendship to the delight of the Congress. And so have many other group leaders such as Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Mukut Mithi, Meghalaya PCC chief O.L. Nongtudu, Meghalaya Deputy Chief Minister D.D. Lapang, and the powerful Assam Congress leader of the Nepali community M.K. Subba.

Perhaps the strongest signal that the revolt in the region may at some stage spread beyond Meghalaya came when Nagaland Chief Minister S.C. Jamir demanded that attempts to "sideline important leaders in the party" should be discouraged. The dissenting view of A.K. Antony, independent-minded CWC member, persisted like a nagging toothache. He opposed expulsion of the Pawar trio, asking whether "the punishment was proportionate to the crime."

However, there is little revolt in other states where the Congress is on the ascendancy. Says K. Mruthyunjam, president of the Karimnagar district Congress in Andhra Pradesh: "The foreigner issue has been thrown out and her speech has silenced her critics." In Chennai, excited Congress supporters raided a shop which had put up a board with some snide remarks about Sonia's foreign origin. Polur Varadhan, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu PCC, said Sonia's speech "made me cry".

With doubts in the party about her leadership ironed out, at least for the moment, Sonia may well be content to go to the polls with minimal changes in the hierarchy. Where she must have her hands on is in the choice of candidates, for which preparations are on to set up the central election committee as required under the party's statute. If she is serious about giving the promised "crushing reply" to those who question her credentials as a prime ministerial aspirant, she must have a team of faithful Congressmen in the 13th Lok Sabha. Control over the candidate-selection mechanism is an absolute must for that.

However, to get them in the required numbers, she must have a lot more to tell the electorate than rewinding and replaying the old line about her marriage and the family tragedies. At the AICC session, she harped on her life's chronicle but forgot about the infiltration in Kargil and the consequent threat to national security. A few more such omissions, and she will be offered smelling-salts instead of votes.

INTERVIEW: SHARAD PAWAR
"A cook too can serve a family for 31 years"

The president of the newly formed Nationalist Congress Party Sharad Pawar defended both the timing and the content of his revolt in a conversation with Senior Editor Sumit Mitra:

How do you assess Sonia Gandhi's speech at the AICC session?
It is a confirmation of her autocratic style. She said those who had the slightest doubt were free to leave the party. It is a dangerous statement.

Don't you think her emotional speech will have an impact at least on the rural voters?
What impact? She hasn't said anything on the real issues. The other day the defence minister told us that at least 600 people had infiltrated from Pakistan in the Kargil sector. Such a serious issue, yet no reference to it in the AICC deliberations. The AICC is full of sycophants, nothing else.

She says that when the party was out on a limb all of you had gone to her with 'folded hands' and now you found her unfit to rule.
It is not correct. During the election campaign last year, she repeated that she'd not be a candidate. But after the polls she became not only the party chief but also the chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party.

Why didn't you raise the subject then?
We kept mum at that time because her attempts at self-promotion could not have serious consequences with the Congress having only 140 seats. But when she made a bid for prime ministership and boasted "I have got 272 members", we could see that she had become the CPP chairperson with a clear plan to grab power. We have protested now because we were not willing to face the electorate with her as the prime ministerial candidate.

What is particularly unacceptable in her candidature? Her foreign origin or lack of experience?
Both.

Congressmen say she has been married to the Nehru-Gandhi family for 31 years. What more experience does she require?
Marriage is no substitute for political experience. Some cook too could have served the family for 31 years. Does that mean that the cook has the necessary experience to run the country?

Why do you insist on the prime minister being a natural-born Indian?
It is absolutely necessary. Otherwise no senior person in the government or party can feel comfortable in discussions. If a nuclear scientist has to discuss some secrets with the prime minister, can he do so if he is not sure about the prime minister's links abroad through friends and relatives? Emotionally a person is tied to the land of his birth. It's only human.