POLITICS-INDIA: Sonia Gandhi Expected to Shake Off Challenger

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 30 2000 (IPS) - Once again, the Italian-born chief of India’s main opposition party finds her leadership under challenge, but few see any threat to her ‘dynastic’ control of the 115-year-old organisation.

Thanks to loyal supporters of the family of her assassinated husband, former premier Rajiv Gandhi, who outweigh the small band of challengers, Sonia Gandhi is expected to be re-elected president of the Congress party. The Congress has ruled India for most of the 53 years since the country’s independence from colonial British rule.

However, her challenger, veteran Congress leader Jitendra Prasad from the country’s most populous and politically important state, is said to have have struck a blow for badly needed “inner party democracy” in the party, which has been dominated by members of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

After days of speculation, Prasada Sunday threw his hat into the ring for the Nov. 12 election of the party president, at the last minute. The challenger had to be escorted to the party headquarters by police as his supporters were physically attacked by Congress party workers anxious to prove their loyalty to Gandhi.

Elections in the Congress party, held every two or three years, are tame affairs with candidates readily following party commands for the sake of ‘consensus’ — specially when it comes to the top job.

The few who dared challenge the top leadership, which swears loyalty to Gandhi, were usually those who had a sizeable popular following of their own. But the biggest challenger in the past two years since Gandhi took control of the Congress, was forced to break off and start his own party.

Initially Gandhi, who was a political recluse for years since her husband’s assassination by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber nine years ago, had fired hopes in the party when she took over.

But two successive national elections fought by the Congress under her leadership, have failed to make an improvement in the party’s performance, keeping it confined to the opposition benches of parliament since 1996.

“If things go the way they have been going, the Congress will not be able to stage a comeback in the next fifty years,” says Jairam Ramesh, who serves as economic specialist for the party and is known for his outspoken views.

The last time the banner of revolt was raised, Gandhi dealt with it in the trade mark ‘autocratic’ style of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty — by throwing out the powerful regional party chief Sharad Pawar.

Pawar went on to form the National Congress Party, which now shares power with the Congress in his western Maharashtra state. His expulsion proved costly for the Congress, which fared worse in the mid-term parliament election held last year than it did when it first contested the national polls under Gandhi’s leadership in March 1998.

A party probe into its poor show in the mid-term poll, reportedly blamed Gandhi’s leadership. The findings of the inquiry were never publicised, reportedly under pressure from the top leadership loyal to Gandhi.

But senior unnamed Congress members were quoted by newspapers as saying that the probe found the Congress had failed to deflect anticipated criticism of Gandhi’s foreign origin by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Another serious challenge to Gandhi’s leadership came from the popular Congress leader Rajesh Pilot who died in a road accident earlier this year. While filing his nomination for the party chief’s election, Prasada said he was working toward Pilot’s goal of bringing about inner party democracy.

Prasada has few influential backers. Among those who would have sympathised with his goal is former party chief and premier P.V. Narasimha Rao, who was known for ‘ignoring’ Gandhi during his years in office.

But Rao is in trouble, convicted early October of having bribed some opposition lawmakers with money to save his then minority government during a confidence vote in parliament seven years ago.

Of late, Prasada has been hitting out at “vested interests, coteries, faction leaders, sycophants and time-servers who have taken over the (Congress) party.”

The challenger is said to have little chance of unseating Gandhi precisely for the same reasons. Political observers expect the election of the Congress chief to be ‘stage-managed’ by the ‘coterie’. They point out that the list of eligible voters, nominated by the various state wings of the party, is still to be finalised.

Writes T.V.R. Shenoy, a media columnist known for his pro-BJP stand, in the ‘Indian Express’ newspaper: “Congressmen themselves admit, albeit off the record that up to 50 percent of the membership rolls in the past were simply bogus.”