Ambika in bid to foil detractors' move

Ambika Soni, the highflying general secretary of the Congress party, is under increasing pressure to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Although unwilling initially, Soni, a close confidante of party president Sonia Gandhi, has given her consent to foil the move of her detractors by indicating her preference to contest the Hoshiarpur Lok Sabha seat in Punjab.

Soni's detractors wanted her to contest the South Delhi seat as senior working committee leader Dr. Manmohan Singh has refused to contest the seat after making a disastrous electoral debut in 1999 elections.

Although Soni is a Rajya Sabha member from Delhi, she does not want to take any chances since she does not get along well with the Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit as they are seen as rivals due to their proximity with Sonia.

In contrast, she gets along well with the Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh who has promised her a certain victory in return for her active support recently when Singh faced a rebellion.

Finding a formidable candidate from South Delhi is a real challenge for the Congress party since it has failed to win this seat in the past five elections. Soni's detractors thought pushing her to contest from here may mean her certain loss and probably end of her hold over the party.

Even though Hoshiarpur is not a traditional Congress seat as the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won it in 1999, 1998 and 1996 respectively. However, Soni expects to sail through from here with the help of a friendly Singh and the BSP that is likely to enter into an electoral tie-up with the Congress party.

Soni wants to prove her detractors wrong and steal the thunder. A victory in the Lok Sabha polls will enhance her stature and may consolidate her number two position in the party further.

The move to ask Soni to contest the South Delhi seat was mooted by the faction headed by veteran leader Arjun Singh, the last Congressman to win this seat when he won the seat in a by-election caused by the assassination of Lalit Maken in 1985 by Sikh militants.

Manmohan Singh has already made it clear to the party that he is not keen to contest from South Delhi again. "I am not cut out for elections as I am not a politician in the true sense. I won't contest unless I am asked to," he told Gulf News.

Arjun Singh along with Sonia's political secretary Ahmed Patel and working committee member Pranab Mukherjee are believed to be active in cutting Soni to size. All three of them are also members of the Rajya Sabha.

All of them have already excused themselves from contesting for the Lok Sabha due to different reasons - Singh due to advanced age and poor health; Patel due to his preoccupation with the party work; and Mukherjee since he has no political base.

The Congress party is not alone in searching for a suitable candidate to contest from South Delhi. The rival BJP may also have to find a new candidate from the seat since the incumbent MP Vijay Kumar Malhotra has expressed the desire to contest from his old Lok Sabha constituency Delhi Sadar after Madan Lal Khurana's recent appointment as Governor of Rajasthan.