May 11, 1998

By Harish Gupta

It was a large aperitif but a small dinner. Since Sonia Gandhi's meteoric rise to the top seat of the Congress four weeks ago, the party was waiting with bated breath for a hire-and-fire drama. Finally, when she unfolded her list of changes on April 26, it was no more than cosmetic. Getting the sack from the Congress Working Committee (CWC) were Vice-President Jitendra Prasada and a couple of chief ministers -- J.B. Patnaik of Orissa and Lalthanhawla of Mizoram. Three new members -- P.A. Sangma, Rajesh Pilot and Sushil Kumar Shinde -- were inducted. And Motilal Vora has been made a permanent invitee to the CWC. A bunch of 16 joint secretaries, with no particular role to perform, was told to quit, and the designation abolished. Eight of them were redesignated as secretaries, with two others, Selja and Mani Shankar Aiyar, added to the list. Also thrown into the stew were two new "cells" -- one on economic policy headed by Manmohan Singh and the other on foreign affairs led by K. Natwar Singh. The window-dressing was complete with the replacement of party spokesman V.N. Gadgil by a smarter and younger set comprising Ajit Jogi, Ambika Soni and Salman Khursheed.

It was a swap between tweedledum and tweedledee, except for the induction of Sangma, the former Lok Sabha Speaker. Sonia left untouched the five general-secretaries of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC), including R.K. Dhawan and Oscar Fernandes, both defeated in the last polls.

Contrary to expectations, she did not use her formidable support in the party to jettison the 10 elected CWC members. "The elected members would have resigned," says a party insider, "if Sonia wanted them to." Even Sitaram Kesri was retained as a permanent invitee to the committee. Pranab Mukherjee, who fancies himself as the party's "economist laureate", was somewhat downsized with Manmohan Singh's appointment. Aiyar's induction into the secretariat, after a bad courtship with Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, was a tribute paid by Sonia to her late husband's friend-cum-follower. Closeness to Rajiv also holds the key to the elevation of Natwar Singh, Jogi and Khursheed.

However, the changes do not offer a clue to how Sonia is planning to gear her party to face the assembly elections due this year. Leader of the Opposition in Parliament and CWC member Sharad Pawar says, "The party's litmus test will be in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi." Assembly elections are scheduled to take place in these states in October-November. He says there is a possibility that states like Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh may also go to polls. Is the Congress president giving the right signals by dumping two Congress chief ministers from the party's apex body at this stage? Besides, the entry into the CWC of Pilot -- author of a report that blames Arjun Singh and Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh for the party's lack-lustre performance in Madhya Pradesh -- changes the Congress' power equations in the state.

The trouble with the Congress under Sonia is that it remains as hamstrung as earlier by the lack of a clear political agenda. The party will continue to go under unless it realises that it is more important to find new issues than getting new executives. In the "litmus test" of the assembly elections, it may then show up only the wrong colours.

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