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THE NATION:
CONGRESS
Feuding
Eves
Penchant
for power has divided top women leaders of a party that is ostensibly
committed to the empowerment of the fairer sex
By
Lakshmi Iyer
Last
October, when Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson Najma Heptulla was elected
president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)-a forum of the parliaments
of 138 nations-the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance Government upgraded
the ranking of her office from minister of state to cabinet minister.
Najma's own party, the Congress, however, did not bother to toast her
success.
 More
recently, when Najma invited Congress President Sonia Gandhi to attend
the millennium conference of presiding officers - organised by the United
Nations and the IPU-in New York, senior women leaders in the party lobbied
hard to ensure that Sonia did not participate. Among them was Najma's
longtime rival, former Union minister Margaret Alva, who enlisted the
support of AICC general secretaries Prabha Rau and Ambika Soni. The women
overruled Sonia's foreign policy adviser K. Natwar Singh and her private
secretary Vincent George. It didn't behove her status, they decreed, to
attend a meeting presided over by Najma. Unable to cope with the pressure,
Sonia opted out of the tour at the last minute, officially citing the
impending arrival of daughter Priyanka's baby.
In a party
committed to women's empowerment, the conduct of Alva and her associates
may seem paradoxical. However, Congress women admit there is sharp peer
rivalry among them. In fact, such is the jostling for power that almost
all prominent women leaders are at war with each other. Some, like Najma
and Alva or Soni and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, are old rivals.
Other feuds, like those between the voluble Andhra MP Renuka Choudhury
and Alva, between Begum Noor Bano and Alva or Mahila Congress President
Chandresh Kumari and Soni, are more ephemeral in nature.
At the root
of the Najma-Alva antagonism is the desire to hold the office of vice-president
of India two years from now. The duo's common ambition is fired by their
long years in the Rajya Sabha. Alva came to the House in 1974 and went
on to become a Union minister a decade later. She remained a member of
the House till 1998. Najma came to the House six years after Alva and
became the deputy chairperson during her first term.
Najma was
close to bagging the post of vice-president in 1997. But the then Congress
president Sitaram Kesri did not support her as he saw her as a Sharad
Pawar acolyte. Alva is staking claim to the exalted office as a legatee
of her mother-in-law Violet Alva, who was Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson
between 1962 and 1969. The senior Alva quit office in 1969 after Indira
Gandhi backed Gopal Swarup Pathak as vice-president in- stead of her.
A week after resigning, she died.
The rivalry
between Najma and Alva began more than a decade ago, when peeved at being
consistently denied a chance to speak in the Rajya Sabha, Alva shot off
a protest note to Najma. The spat intensified last year when Alva replaced
Najma as chairperson of the parliamentary committee on women's empowerment.
Najma had headed the panel since it was founded in 1997 on her initiative
and, therefore, did not appear too willing to relinquish charge. Her reluctance
set her on a collision course with the Congress high command. It also
triggered a tug of war between Congress chief whip in the Rajya Sabha,
Pranab Mukherjee, and the party's deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, Madhavrao
Scindia. Sonia then intervened and settled the dispute in Alva's favour.
In the current face-off, Alva used the panel to kindle Sonia's animus
against Najma. With Congress members on the panel in attendance, she made
a special presentation to Sonia on the committee's activities, comparing
its performance with that during Najma's tenure.
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The
Government should encash at least a part of its stake in LIC and GIC before
its too late, suggests INDIA TODAY associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar
in 
