The waiting game

Congress(I) president Sonia Gandhi appears reluctant to make the best of a window of opportunity to bid for power at the Centre. Does it reflect a leadership crisis or a strategic lull?

VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN
in New Delhi

ON June 22, Sonia Gandhi completed one hundred days as the Congress(I) president. The same day, former Prime Minister and Samajawadi Janata Party leader Chandra Shekhar addressed a press conference at which he indirectly urged her to pull down the 100-days-plus-old Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government and form an alternative government. Chandra Shekhar's call, and the political events that preceded and followed it, signified the first real test of Sonia Gandhi's leadership of the party. That period was marked by a growing defiance to the BJP among the other constituents of the ruling coalition at the Centre. The same period saw the formation of the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav, a development which provided an opportunity for the Congress(I) to join hands with secular forces without directly allying itself with United Front, whose Government it pulled down last year. The trouble in the BJP front was characterised by incessant threats from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) to withdraw support to the Government if the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Ministry in Tamil Nadu was not dismissed, and disenchantment with the BJP leadership among other partners such as the Samata Party, the Trinamul Congress and the Biju Janata Dal.

However, the Congress(I)'s response to the situation was anything but coherent. In evidence was a reluctance to take forceful steps to derive political advantage from this. Starting with the initial reaction to Chandra Shekhar's call by the Congress(I) Working Committee (CWC) a day after it was made, to Sonia Gandhi's own pronouncements later, the reactions betrayed a lack of readiness to pursue a proactive policy. The CWC statement said that suggestions for a Congress(I)-led Government had been noted and that the consolidation of secular forces remained an important issue for the party. The CWC failed to explain whether or how it proposed to bring the secular forces together or whether it had a plan to work towards the formation of an alternative government.

THE reasons for this ambiguous response were not far to seek. More than anything else it reflected a defeatist attitude in the Congress(I) leadership, particularly in the party president, that it will not be able to address the pressures of forging and running a coalition. Underlying this attitude was a realisation that the party organisation itself was not in a fit shape to undertake the task. The reverse that Sonia's handpicked candidate Ram Pradhan suffered in the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha in Maharashtra was evidence enough. By the time Chandra Shekhar's call came, the defeat had snowballed into a major internal problem in the Congress(I), with many senior leaders, including Arjun Singh, S.B. Chavan and Madhavrao Scindia, gunning for Sharad Pawar, the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha, and his supporters.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
Sonia Gandhi being greeted by senior leader from Maharashtra Sharad Pawar and former party president Sitaram Kesri soon after she was elected chairperson of the Congress(I) Parliamentary Party in New Delhi in March. New questions about Sonia Gandhi's political decisions and choices and her leadership style have come to the fore within four months of her assumption of office as party president.

The inner-party developments related to the Rajya Sabha election defeat, including the probe by a three-member CWC team and the submission of show-cause notices to Pawar-loyalist MP Praful Patel and 11 MLAs, indicated the return of factionalism, with Sonia willy-nilly becoming a part of it. The anti-Pawar leaders managed to present these developments as a confrontation between Pawar and Sonia.

Pawar's own initial responses to these happenings, including his defence of the accused MLAs and MP, aggravated the situation. The way Sonia was portrayed as a leader taking on Pawar also signified her near-total submission to a group which wanted to use her as an instrument in a factional war against the Maharashtra leader. The net result of the still-unresolved problem in Maharashtra was the collapse of the "change with caution" policy carefully evolved by Sonia Gandhi in the initial stages of her tenure.

RIGHT from her first days in office, after the takeover from Sitaram Kesri on March 14, Sonia Gandhi had made it clear that her primary emphasis would be on streamlining the party organisation in a manner that suited her. The message that every one of her actions gave out was that she would embark on political initiatives only after she was in firm control of the party. Gaining control over the party was not an easy task for Sonia given her own limitations of inexperience and lack of understanding of realpolitik. Sonia herself seemed to realise this limitation and apparently it was this that led to the adoption of the policy that was termed in Congress(I) circles as "change with caution".

V. SUDERSHAN
At a meeting of the Congress(I) Working Committee in New Delhi on June 23, Sonia Gandhi with V.N. Gadgil and R.K. Dhawan.

This involved attempts to accommodate all senior leaders and their groups in sinecure positions even while trying to create a new image by projecting relatively young leaders such as P.A. Sangma, Rajesh Pilot and Salman Khursheed as well as recent high-profile entrants such as former Supreme Court Chief Justice Ranganath Mishra, senior advocate Kapil Sibal and former bureaucrat Ram Pradhan. Sonia's was a corporate management style. The formation of committees to look into aspects of party functioning proved this.

While such a style seemed to evoke a positive response initially, resentment started building up as it became increasingly clear that the day-to-day functioning of the party was in the hands of a group that had come up around her. This group consisted of members of some of the committees, such as CWC member Arjun Singh, Mani Shankar Aiyar and Margaret Alva, as well as persons not directly involved with the party, including Sonia's personal secretary Vincent George. By the time the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha took place in the third week of June, even middle-level leaders of the party had started complaining that Sonia's policy was a unique amalgam of projecting a democratic facade even while depending on a group.

What seemed to have upset some senior leaders was the clout that somebody like Arjun Singh had in day-to-day affairs as well as in policy-making despite having lost most of his mass base and organisational backing. "A leader who has lost two successive elections has greater influence on the party president than somebody like Sharad Pawar, who brought in 38 seats from Maharashtra," a Pawar loyalist MP told Frontline.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
Rajesh Pilot, Arjun Singh and Madhavrao Scindia. Leaders who are opposed to Pawar are seen to be seeking to use Sonia Gandhi as an instrument in their factional war against the Maharashtra leader.

Her dependence on the group and the collapse of the "change with caution" policy cut into Sonia's credibility within the party. The rank and file had expected that a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family leading the party would spell the end of factionalism. However, Sonia's leadership style and the response to it from senior leaders like Pawar dashed the hope.

The Rajya Sabha election results from Maharashtra worsened matters.

Pawar supporters say that cross-voting by Congress(I) MLAs took place not only in Maharashtra but also in Uttar Pradesh. Why, they ask, was that not probed? They see the party president as applying double standards. This scepticism about Sonia's sense of fair play is being reflected in references to her political line.

QUESTIONS about the strategy of not bidding for power at this stage have come up at various levels of the party. Sonia's positions on the nuclear tests as well as on the Ayodhya temple prefabrication controversy were questioned too. It was felt that Sonia's vacillation in pursuing the line formulated by the party's defence and foreign affairs cell soon after the tests had affected the party's credibility. While the cell had questioned the timing of the tests, Sonia, after a meeting with the Prime Minister, welcomed the tests. She averred that the tests were a continuation of the nuclear policy followed by Congress(I) governments in the past. Later, this position was corrected and the Congress(I) leadership returned to the line formulated by the defence and foreign affairs cell.

RAJEEV BHATT
Salman Khursheed, appointed president of the Uttar Pradesh unit of the party.

Similarly, when Congress(I) members, including Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot, were seeking to put the Government on the mat on the Ayodhya temple prefabrication controversy in Parliament, Sonia wrote to Vajpayee asking him to spell out the facts of the issue. This gave the Government an opportunity to explain matters outside Parliament and thus weakened the stand of the Congress(I) in the House. Many party MPs believe that behind Sonia's letter was Arjun Singh, a non-MP, who did not want Pawar and Pilot to be in the limelight on such a crucial issue.

Those who favoured immediate action to displace the Government saw Arjun Singh's hand behind Sonia's go-slow formula in the matter; the Arjun Singh line is opposed to an alliance with secular parties at present and argues that given the performance of the BJP-led Government, the Congress(I) will be able to revive itself at the national level sooner than expected. According to this theory, the Congress(I)'s revival would take place basically at the expense of United Front constituents.

Leaders such as Pawar, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Madhavrao Scindia have reservations about this perception and say that outpacing parties like the S.P. and the RJD in their areas of influence will be difficult. They advocate friendly ties with other secular parties before the Congress(I) returns to capture the power and the glory. Scindia went on record to suggest that the Congress(I) support the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha to form a government. However, he did not repeat the suggestion - obviously on instructions from above.

According to sources in the party, CWC members such as Pawar, Azad and R.K. Dhawan advocated the line that the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha, which had claimed that it would be able to wean away the AIADMK as well as sections of the Samata Party and the BJD from the BJP front, can be supported from outside by both the Congress(I) and the U.F. for a while. These leaders believe that it is important to see the back of the BJP-led Government as soon as possible. Other leaders such as Jitendra Prasada and Rajesh Pilot do not overtly support this view, but see nothing wrong with it.

Sonia Gandhi's core group of supporters have negated this, according to sources close to Arjun Singh. They argue that the withdrawal of support to the Government by the AIADMK and sections of the Samata Party and the BJD would not ensure the numbers to form a government. Only the formation of a larger alliance involving also groups like the AIADMK and the DMK as well as the Left parties and the Trinamul Congress, mutually opposed as they are, will enable the formation of a government. Arjun Singh is reported to have said that the pressures and contradictions that can be expected from such an arrangement will be difficult to handle. A Madhya Pradesh leader close to Arjun Singh said: "The AIADMK will try to do what it has done to the BJP. Parties like the CPI(M) and the Trinamul Congress will fight against each other. All this will diminish the Congress(I)'s image before the people. If we want to come back to power, we have to present ourselves as a party of principles."

Some supporters of Pawar, however, lampoon this idea. According to them, behind this stance is the fact that people like Arjun Singh do not stand a chance of gaining respect in a non-BJP government, especially because of their lack of mass support.

AMID this tussle, the cohesion that Sonia Gandhi wanted to create in the party is proving to be elusive. However, she and her supporters seem to be least concerned about this. Sonia, meanwhile, proceeds with her organisational revamp exercise. New Pradesh Congress(I) Committee presidents have been appointed in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Kerala. In the uneasy situation that exists in the party, these moves have come in for criticism.

While the appointment of a relatively young Salman Khursheed as PCC president in Uttar Pradesh has caused resentment among the veterans owing allegiance to former presidents N.D. Tiwari and Jitendra Prasada, the elevation of Sat Mahajan as president in Himachal Pradesh has been opposed by younger leaders in the State unit of the party. According to Sonia loyalists, Khursheed will bring youthful dynamism to the party and attract the estranged minorities back to the Congress(I). However, his detractors say that Khursheed has no hold on the minorities and that his only qualification for the job is his proximity to 10 Janpath.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
Jitendra Prasada, marginalised in the reorganisation of the party apparatus.

The new president of the Tamil Nadu unit of the party, Tindivanam K. Ramamurthy, is a long-time opponent of Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) leader G.K. Moopanar. Hence his appointment is bound to affect the national level coordination that the TMC had proposed to have with the Congress(I). The choice of A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury in West Bengal is seen as a balancing exercise, which will not bring major political gains for the party. The only factor in favour of Chowdhury, according to sources in the Congress(I), is that he has retained the Malda Lok Sabha seat repeatedly. He is generally perceived to be too senior in age and less than effective in addressing organisational problems. Priya Ranjan Das Munshi has been designated working president in West Bengal, in an obvious effort to have a functional leader to guide the organisation.

Given the reactions from the party hierarchy, it is more or less clear that the overall impact of the recent nominations will not be positive. But the single most important factor that will decide the future of the Congress(I) is how the Maharashtra imbroglio is resolved. Many observers are of the view that if Sonia continues to play along with sections of her group who want to sideline Sharad Pawar, the results would be disastrous. Rajiv Gandhi was similarly driven by his personal insecurities in 1988 to oust Finance Minister V.P. Singh from the party.

This sparked a process of decline in the Congress(I), leading to Rajiv Gandhi's ouster from power in 1989. "Leading a party which is not yet in power, Sonia cannot afford to repeat the mistake," a former Congress(I) president told Frontline.

Will Sonia choose caution or adventurism? The future of the party and its president will depend a great deal on her choice.

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