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Back from hospital, Sonia Gandhi facing daunting task

	January 14, 2008

After almost a week long stay in hospital, Congress president Sonia Gandhi returned home on January 6, and despite being ad¬vised rest by doctors had to plunge into the thick of politics again.



Sonia Gandhi held deliberations with top leaders of the party, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on January 10 on the way ahead in the wake of the Congress debacle in the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections. A day earlier, she held a meting with AICC general secretaries in charge of different states on January 9.



At the meeting on January 10, there were suggestions on how to step up work on the flagship progammes launched by the UPA. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh were among the senior leaders who attended the meeting.



The new year will see a series of Assembly elections ahead of the Lok Sabha elections to be held by May next year. Sonia Gandhi’s interaction with party leaders came at a time when the Finance Minister has already initiated consultations on the Union Budget for the next financial year, which is expected to be a populist budget as it would be the last for a full year presented by the UPA Government.



The extended core group meeting is reported to have indicat¬ed the party’s broad approach to the budget to Finance Minister Chidambaram, who was present. Sources say, the core group direct¬ed Chidambaram to frame a particularly people friendly budget with sops for the ‘aam admi’, common man.



Observers say, that Sonia Gandhi had many pending issues at hand to settle. There is renewed pressure for a leadership change in Maharashtra from Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s detrac¬tors. There is also lobbying for the posts of Pradesh Congress Committee chiefs in West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh.



Another major issue which has come up is the relationship with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party. Mayawati recently threatened to withdraw support to the UPA Government if Uttar Pradesh did not get more funds from the Centre for the State’s development and if her security was not upgraded.



Another hot issue is the nuclear deal with the United States. Negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on India specific safeguards are in the final stage and may come to a conclusion on January 16. Once a draft is ready, it has to be taken to the UPA-Left Committee, with no signs of the Left relenting on its total opposition to he nuclear deal.





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Time for introspection after electoral setbacks ?



Observers say that several senior leaders of the Congress feel that it is time to introspect after the party’s electoral defeat in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.



One section, which includes many Union ministers and AICC functionaries, believes the party needs a rethink on secularism. This group wants Sonia Gandhi to identify more with the majority community to dispel the “wrong impression” perpetuated by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP that the Congress cares only for the minorities.



The think-tank is wary of the blend of economic Right, nationalism and religion in the BJP’s arsenal as opposed to the Congress’s loose liberal-socialist-secular mix.



But the liberals in the party are against any “course cor¬rection” because they fear that while tackling the BJP in its citadels like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi, such a strategy could “drag the Congress down the same path (as the rival party)”.



These four states, along with six others, go to the polls this year. The Congress, which sees these as a dress rehearsal for the general elections, will be looking to make up for some of last month’s reverses.



A Union Minister credited Sonia Gandhi with “radical think¬ing” but said this was followed up in a “conservative” manner.

Soon after the Gujarat debacle, Union Minister Arjun Singh had urged Sonia Gandhi to be a “lot more assertive”.



A section of the Congress wants her to ponder why the back¬ward classes, tribals and Scheduled Castes are drifting away from the party in spite of its avowed commitment to their cause. This group believes the party lacks credible faces representing these sections in the Union Cabinet, AICC secretariat and state Con¬gress units.



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Facing future challenges: Group to come out with a report



Reports say that the recently constituted 13-member AICC group to look into future challenges is to soon submit its report to the party president with far reaching recommendationfor rejuvenating the party at various levels. The key recommendations is to make the functioning of party panels from AICC and PCC down to DCC and Panchayat and booth levels democratic by doing away with the age old nominations regime.



The committee feels that to make the party machinery more systematic and responsive, it should be repositioned as a semi-cadre-based party from the present ‘movement oriented’ one. Though the committee held only a couple of formal sittings so far to discuss the broad guidelines, there have been informal discus¬sions among members to frame up the points. There are indications that the committee is examining inputs from outside too.



“The committee is planning to submit its first report to the Congress President soon. It will be an exercise aimed at redefin¬ing the very system of the Congress machinery in these days of new challenges,” said a senior party leader.



The report will deal with the task of making the ‘top-heavy’ Congress system more sensitive to the challenges and aspirations on the grass-roots level and will try to make the candidates-selection process for various elections more local-centric, based on organisational merits than the much-abused loyalty quotient.



According to sources, the recommendations being mooted include holding of regular ‘meaningful elections’ to constitute the AICC, PCC, DCC, block and booth party committees.



The exercise will also emphasis the ‘all-inclusive’ mantra by making conscious attempts to provide representation to party members belonging to socially and economically deprived sections in party panels. The move stems from the realisation that new regional and state parties are making a head-way in hijacking important social segments like the dalits and tribals, who used to be largely part of the Congress rainbow constituency.



It has also recognised the role the regional parties have played in rekindling the politically potent regional aspirations of the polity, and the reality that the Congress has to be sensi¬tive to such trends.



There is a suggestion that the candidates should be selected through a sort of inner-party constituency-wise election process that should give the central leadership a better understanding of the aspirants among the partymen of the locality.





Second SRC to set up soon



To tackle the demand for creation of Telengana and Vidarbha, the Congress has decided on the setting up of a States Reorgani¬zation Commission. AICC general secretary in charge of Andhra Pradesh Veerappa Moily said in Hyderabad on January 9 that the decision has already been taken by the Congress and UPA govern¬ment and its implementation would come any day.



Moily said the second SRC will specifically examine the creation of Telengana and Vidarbha. “If UP Chief Minister Mayawa¬ti makes a request, then the possibility of trifurcation of that state would also be taken up,” he said. When asked about the demands for separate smaller states from other regions in the country, Moily said those advocating smaller states are free to make representations to the commission. However, at this point, the SRC is being entrusted only with the task of addressing the Telengana and Vidarbha demands, he said.



According to Moily, the setting up of the second SRC was the Congress commitment during the 2004 elections. “Congress elector¬al ally Telengana Rashtra Samithi(TRS) was also party to this commitment”, Moily said and added that the UPA sub-committee headed by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, set up to examine the demand for Telengana, could not evolve a consensus as several parties were yet to submit their responses. “The Congress initiative is to arrive at a consensus,” he stressed



The Telengana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has criticized the Congress decision to constitute a second SRC. The party said this is yet another move to cheat people of the Telengana region. TRS president K. Chandrashekhar Rao said in Hyderabad on January 10 that the party would organize grassroots level campaign to expose “how the Congress is trying to betray the aspirations of the people.” He demanded the resignation of Congress MPs and MLAs who won on the separate Telengana plank in 2004.



The Bahujan Samaj Party has said that it will concede Tele¬ngana if it is voted to power at the Centre. Speaking in Hydera¬bad on Jan. 6, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BSP chief Mayawa¬ti said that her party was in favour of smaller states. Mayawati claimed that the BSP was the only party which aimed at political power on the strength of its own following so that the capital¬ists had no say in government. She said the party was committed to serving the poor irrespective of caste and religion.





Congress to review support to Madhu Koda Govt in Jharkhand



The Congress on January 9 said that it will withdraw support to the Madhu Koda government in Jharkhand after January 15 if there is no improvement in the state government’s performance on development issues. Union Minister Ajay Maken, party incharge of Jharkhand said the decision will be taken on the basis of assess¬ment of how the Madhu Koda Government performed on development issues.



On November 15 last year, the party gave a 60-day ultimatum to the Koda government to act on a 19-point charter of demands. It ends on January 15.



The Congress has nine members in the 81-member Assembly. If it withdraws support, the government will be reduced to a minori¬ty.



Maken’s remarks came after he met party president Sonia Gandhi along with other office bearers to wish her a speedy recovery.



The 15-month-old Koda government survived a no-confidence motion moved by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance last month.



Senior leaders should be brought back: Karunakaran tells Congress



Back in the Congress after a three year break, veteran Kerala leader K. Karunakaran has said that Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar and other senior leaders, who had left the party, should be brought back to face a resurgent BJP. “I am the seniormost Congressman. My firm view is that not only me, but also senior leaders like Pawar should be brought back. It is my personal opinion and no discussion has begun in that direction,” the 89-year-old leader said in an interview.

Karunakaran felt that the involvement of Rahul Gandhi and other youth leaders would immensely benefit the party. “We need the services of the youth. At the same time, the experience of senior leaders is crucial,” he said.