Comment: Challenge before Sonia is growing irrelevance

It would be easy to read too much into the results of the recent by-elections.

In the south, the Congress lost the Ernakulam Lok Sabha seat. It lost Solapur, vacated by Sushil Kumar Shinde when he became Chief Minister of Maharashtra. In Andhra Pradesh, Mohammed Moqtada Khan of the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen won the Karwan Assembly seat defeating Baddam Balareddy of the BJP, the Congress lost its deposit.

In Orissa, Sanjeeb Sahoo retained Birmaharajpur for the Biju Janata Dal, while the Congress (I) was unable to take advantage of any 'anti-incumbent factor'.

In Meghalaya, Jopsimon Phanbuh of the BJP won Laban by trouncing the Nationalist Congress Party's Sonber Shullai, the Congress, again, did miserably.

With bad news coming in from every corner of the country, small wonder if Congressmen are again wondering if Sonia Gandhi has what it takes to lead them back to power in Delhi.

I said it would be 'easy' to make too much of the poll results. I never said that such an instant analysis would be necessarily correct. First, by-elections are a great opportunity for the disgruntled to express themselves. There is no danger of the government falling!

Second, I honestly don't believe that the issue of Sonia Gandhi as a potential prime minister was an issue. However, I think the results do pose a challenge to the Congress president's leadership qualities. At the Shimla brainstorming session, the Congress High Command reached the conclusion that the party could no longer hope to fight alone.

Sonia Gandhi and her acolytes glossed over two potential pitfalls. The first was the issue of whether the allies-to-be would be equally happy to take up the proffered hand. The second was whether the resolution would be swallowed by regional Congress units.
What should have happened had the Shimla plan worked?

The CPM and the Congress should have come to terms in Ernakulam, and the Nationalist Congress Party should have gone all out to back the Congress in Solapur. (As also in Laban in Meghalaya.)

I am sure this would have worked had it been left to people in Delhi, notably to CPM General-Secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet.

Instead, the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala exploited the rift in the Congress ranks, and the Nationalist Congress Party seized the opportunity to fire a warning shot ahead of the Vidhan Sabha polls in Maharashtra next year.

But, once all the sound and the fury had died down, what might happen? Will Karunakaran really break the Congress in Kerala? Will Sharad Pawar truly walk out of the alliance with the Congress in Mumbai? I doubt it!

Consider what options both men possess. Karunakaran has spent a lifetime battling the Leftists in Kerala. Few remember this today, but the veteran all but threatened to desert Sonia Gandhi in 1999 when there was a real chance that she would form a ministry with support from the Marxists.

Will he really have a better chance of becoming chief minister of Kerala by joining hands with his old foes? Or will he choose to remain in the parent party now that he has effectively demonstrated how much clout he possesses on the ground?

Doesn't that apply to Pawar too? There is a clear polarisation in Maharashtra between the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance on the one hand and the NCP-Congress coalition on the other. Can you really see Sharad Pawar hugging Bal Thackeray and the BJP?

If nothing else, it would mean he must then share power with two major allies rather than just one!

So, if there is no danger to any alliance, what are the challenges to Sonia Gandhi? First, she needs to convince her would-be coalition partners that they must restrain their ambitions.

Second, she has to convince her own satraps to let go of regional goals to pursue an all-India level target.

And she must do all this without either driving anyone to rebellion or being humiliated herself.

When Karunakaran supporters took out victory parades in Ernakulam, all one saw were posters of Indira Gandhi and the veteran himself draped in Congress colours. The Congress banners bore the old 'Charkha' symbol of pre-Independence days rather than the familiar 'hand' symbol.

It was as if Sonia Gandhi were irrelevant. That is the true challenge to Sonia Gandhi – not to crush a rebellion, but to assert her continued relevance.