May 18  , 1998

After the inquisition, Sonia has granted a reprieve to the three party chief ministers. But there's more trouble ahead with murmurs of discontent over the AICC revamp.

By Harish Gupta

Only 100 million people, out of India's population of 846 million, as revealed in the 1991 census, live in the last three Congress-ruled states of Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Mizoram. In normal circumstances, one would have expected their chief ministers to be awarded the Congress substitute, if at all, of the Victoria Cross. But the threesome, Digvijay Singh of Madhya Pradesh, J.B. Patnaik of Orissa and Lalthanhawla of Mizoram, were subjected to an inquisition by party President Sonia Gandhi. Of the six committees she constituted to go into the causes of the Congress debacle, three are related to their states. While both Patnaik and Lalthanhawla were dropped from the all-powerful Congress Working Committee (CWC), Digvijay was blitzed with signals that he might be made to quit the chief ministership before his state goes to the assembly polls later this year.

Why the Congress chief ministers were pilloried remained a riddle until reports began filtering out that the three men were suspected to be fifth columnists of the party's rival power centre headed by Sharad Pawar, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. Tales of secret conclaves between Pawar and the chief ministers had reached the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters. The Sonia groupies, each eager to prove unflinching loyalty, were agog with stories of a "ginger group" under Pawar all set to challenge the party president in the budget session of Parliament. Leading the loyalist brigade are old battlehorses like Arjun Singh and M.L. Fotedar, as well as new players like K. Natwar Singh and Sonia's personal secretary, Vincent George, who is speed-typing his emerging role in Congress politics.

To add to the Congress chief ministers' woes were reports that they'd met supporters of former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and even Pramod Mahajan, political adviser to Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee. There were sinister interpretations of Pawar's statement that before taking action against Digvijay, "we must fix responsibility first".

Lately, however, peace seems to have returned. Singh has been given a clear reprieve till the assembly elections.This is obviously a tactical move, a ploy to win the chief ministers back from their dangerous dalliance with Pawar. The Sonia brigade has clearly decided to settle the leadership issue in the party before taking on the chief ministers. The basic contradiction in the Congress is between Sonia's coterie and Pawar. And it must be resolved, to the advantage of either, before the party can shake off its slumber and take on the BJP.

Sonia-Pawar relations reached a new flashpoint recently. Datta Meghe, a Lok Sabha MP owing allegiance to Pawar, criticised the appointment of Sudhir Sawant as secretary and blasted Arjun Singh for playing godfather to the party in Madhya Pradesh without stirring from his comfortable residence in Delhi. Pawar supporters were peeved that the Maratha strongman's baiters, like Sushil Kumar Shinde, Sawant and Mukul Wasnik, were given plum posts, while none of his trusted lieutenants was accommodated in the new AICC set-up.

The Sonia acolytes' battle against Pawar seems likely to be a long-drawn war. But where do the Congress chief ministers, particularly Digvijay, fit in the scenario? After all, the party lost 30 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats to the BJP in his state. In 1996, Digvijay had blamed a split in the Congress as the main cause for the party's defeat. He now argues that the Congress' percentage of total votes polled rose from 31 to 39 in 1998 but there was no gain in terms of seats. It is another matter that the Rajesh Pilot Committee has held Arjun Singh more responsible for the party's poor performance. It said that the former Union minister had pushed as many as 11 candidates, none of whom could win. Similarly, there was a hue and cry over the fact that the party had lost 16 of the 21 seats in Orissa and the lone seat in Mizoram. A desperate Patnaik quit the PCC chief's post that he had held on to for long and swallowed the humiliation of being dropped from the CWC to survive as chief minister. His arch rival Hemanand Biswal heads the PCC now. A beleaguered Lalthanhawla was also on his knees explaining that the loss of the Lok Sabha seat was due to the imposition of the candidate from Delhi.

The Congress, driven out of power at the Centre and moved out of all but three of the state assemblies, is still plagued by its birth infirmity -- factionalism. While stalwarts like Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi could contain it by the sheer force of their charisma, Sonia, on assumption of office, raised the expectation that she'd be able to grapple with it because of the family name. But recent events inside the Congress show that the party needs a competent leader more than just a charismatic surname.

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