The Nation: Congress: Running For Power

Sonia Gandhi begins her second year as party president by abandoning her earlier wait-and-watch policy and seeking the immediate ouster of the BJP government.

Under Sonia Gandhi's leadership, party MPs are more brazen, repeatedly stalling Parliament proceedings.

Under the circular dome of Parliament House, even anarchy has shades of etiquette. To interrupt a member while speaking is against the rules, yet a part of life. However, to run to the well of the House is, like belching in public, an unacceptable misdemeanour. The wild bunch of MPs in every age has done it, but never the Congress. In its past two stints in the opposition, when Morarji Desai and V.P. Singh led the respective parliaments, Congress members brought the roof down but never ran into the carpeted middle of the hall to turn their back on the chair.

SONIA'S Y2 VIEWS

ťThe Congress can no longer wait for the "coalition era" to end. It must strike now.

ťA coalition today is better than an election tomorrow. The BJP needs to be beaten in the numbers game in the 12th Lok Sabha itself.

ťParliament is not a banquet. It is a forum to project that the BJP is at least as much corruption-ridden as the Congress had appeared when it was in power.

ťThe old guard of the party must shape up. If not, it will be shipped out by her Young Turks who are waiting in the wings.

ťShort-term target: JPC on Admiral Bhagwat and Guruswamy issues and ouster of Defence Minister George Fernandes.

ťMedium-term target: Try and assume power through a coalition.

Last week, in the first leg of the budget session, the Congress under Sonia Gandhi transgressed its traditional boundary of graciousness with a rare brazenness. Thanks to its members, the proceedings in both the Houses got repeatedly stalled on two issues: dismissal of Vishnu Bhagwat as chief of naval staff, and allegations against the Government by Mohan Guruswamy, the sacked adviser to the finance minister. Even the demand by a few Dalit MPs for the withdrawal or modification of a few administrative circulars issued by the previous United Front government, relating to recruitment and promotion of SC/STs, came in handy. Congress members ran to the well on that issue also. The idea clearly was to stall the proceedings, rather than to make a point.

In Parliament, Congress members are generally known for their orchestrated behaviour, with the baton firmly in the hands of the party leader. The Congress outbursts last week were certainly remote-controlled by Sonia who completed her first year in that post on March 14. The anniversary -- observed in style by the Congress Working Committee (CWC) members at the Akbar Road headquarters of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) -- was also a turning point in Sonia's career in politics. Till then she was the much-applauded proponent of "constructive opposition", a leader determined to first reorganise her decimated and battered party and then begin the countdown to a general election.

However, she seemed to have opened her second year with a new agenda: to push the BJP-led coalition Government to the brink, and then to see if it plonks down with vertigo or needs to be shoved. Sonia's new aggressiveness was evident even during the Bihar episode when she disregarded moderate opinion in her party.

Her aggression witnessed a quantum jump after Bihar. Earlier she had overruled the seniors. Now she turned the heat on them. On a variety of charges. Examples:

In the Rajya Sabha debate on the Guruswamy affair on March 13, party leader Manmohan Singh had struck a low tone as he confined himself to the dismissed adviser's articles and interviews published in newspapers. The chairman repeatedly asked him if he'd like to go beyond the published material with additional evidence of alleged malfeasance by the ruling party, but Manmohan said he'd not stray from the published document. The over-cautiousness, thought Sonia, had caused embarrassment to the party.

Party chief whip Pranab Mukherjee's interventions too were merely procedural and lacklustre. While Vayalar Ravi of the Congress was shouting on the content of the Guruswamy charges, Mukherjee was dwelling on procedures.

The notice which the party had given was under a particular rule that left no room for voting. That was passing up an opportunity to defeat the Government because the ruling coalition is in minority in the Upper House.

At a Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) meeting last week, Sonia dexterously used her new "spokespersons" to run down Manmohan, Mukherjee and Leader of the Opposition Sharad Pawar for their timidity. However humiliated, the trio grinned and bore it. And helplessly watched a generation of parliamentary militants take control of strategy. They are:

P.J. Kurien, Congress chief whip in the Lok Sabha, who was most vocal in his criticism of the old guard for what he describes as a "submissive approach" to the BJP. Kurien now leads the "core committee" of the CPP;

P. Shiv Shankar, deputy leader of the party in the Lok Sabha, an old war-horse now galloping back into prominence. "We shall use every opportunity to expose the BJP," he says;

Lok Sabha member Rajesh Pilot, a former IAF officer, who says that "the Congress cannot keep quiet on Admiral Bhagwat's charges" in the affidavit filed by him;

Prominent MP Kamal Nath, who says, "The party at this hour needs street-fighters like us. The battle on the streets cannot be kept out of Parliament."

Kapil Sibal, eminent lawyer and Rajya Sabha member. His prescription for the budget session: "The defence deals must be exposed through a JPC probe and the defence minister must step down."

Faced with such fiery onslaught from their younger colleagues, even the veterans are discarding pacifist views. Pawar dismisses out of hand the idea of the Congress waiting for the next Lok Sabha polls due in 2003. "Four years? Out of the question." CWC member Jitendra Prasada says attacking the BJP-led Government is the Congress' "national duty". There is also a sudden increase in the frequency of Sonia's direct interactions with the younger elements. Earlier, it was their turn to seek an appointment. Now she is often on the line with them over the cell phone.

On the phone, she is terse and pointed. Like, when should the party accept the date for discussion on the Bhagwat affair? Before the recess or after it, in mid-April? In their new-found self-importance, the party's latest "Young Turks" are preening quite a lot. They have at last found a cause for which they must rebel, and that too an immediate cause which is not relegated three years deep into the next millennium. As a relatively young CWC member known for his proximity to 10 Janpath said: "At the people's level, the choice of leadership is pointing towards the Congress, not the BJP. Why should it take four more years to be reflected in Parliament?"

Just how successful Sonia has been in leading her party towards confrontation with the Government is evident from a CWC decision last week. It was to file as "reference material", and not as "CWC document", the Pachmarhi declarations of last year which includes a paragraph condemning coalitions and pledging to restore the Congress to independent power. Gone are the days when she abhorred to "rush through" in bringing down the coalition in power and hoped that the "coalition in Delhi" would come down on its own because "it is at war with itself".

The Congress under Sonia is certainly looking for a more proactive role in the BJP-led Government's rites of passage. In short, it needs the requisite numbers to form a coalition and not the utopia of a one-party rule. As voting in the Lok Sabha on Bihar showed, the opposition is short by only 29 votes. The new stridency of the Congress under Sonia is an invitation for a general broadcast to bridge this shortfall.