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Congress willing to give left arm for Meira's return

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

The Congress party's desperation to prevent any challenge to Sonia Gandhi's leadership surfaced when it despatched senior leader and former Union minister Raghunandan Lal Bhatia to Meira Kumar's residence to woo her back.

Meira Kumar had left the Congress recently, citing the party's "drift and rudderlessness " as reasons.

The Congress high command had earlier sent as emissaries senior partymen Bhajan Lal and Sushil Kumar Shinde. But with no success.

Kumar, for her part, has left her options open. She said she would decide about her course of action after consulting her party workers.

"It is a fact that Bhatiaji met Meiraji at her residence and requested her to come back to the Congress," a well-placed Congress functionaries told rediff.com. "As Bhatiaji is the third party veteran to use his persuasive prowess to get her back, then it shows that our leadership is desperate, doesn't it?"

They said some Congress veterans, mostly Gandhi loyalists, had categorically told the party chief that Kumar's exit might snowball into an exodus. Which, by implication, means that her leadership would be challenged by ambitious party colleagues.

"All the partymen are certain about one thing: whoever comes or goes, the party will remain intact," the sources underscored, hinting that this was the general consensus among senior leaders.

The high command's nagging concern centres around the fact that even as it has initiated moves to woo back Kumar, the recent conduct of some senior leaders -- Rajesh Pilot, Jitendra Prasada and Pranab Mukherjee among others -- is discouraging, and does not bide well for Gandhi's leadership.

It is understood that Gandhi loyalists are trying to confirm whether her arch-rival Sharad Pawar, who left the Congress to float the Nationalist Congress Party along with Purno A Sangma and Tariq Anwar, is really in contact with Pilot and Prasada.

To add to the Congress chief's woes, the grapevine in the All India Congress Committee has it that Pawar has allegedly told the 'conspirators' in the Congress that he is willing to return if Gandhi is replaced. But sources are not willing to confirm this; neither do they deny it.

Congress spokesman Ajit Jogi attempted to laugh off the query whether the Kumar episode and the departure of Kamaluddin Ahmed from the Congress was a threat to Gandhi's leadership.

"The Congress is a 115-year-old party and it has weathered many such storms," Jogi said. "I don't think there is any threat to madam's [Gandhi's] leadership."

Jogi however was ill at ease to explain why four Congress Working Committee members had resigned after Gandhi became party chief.

Significantly, even Mukherjee, known as a staunch Gandhi loyalist, has pointed out that Kumar's leaving would damage the party as she is a dalit leader. Talking in Calcutta on Monday, Mukherjee said efforts to bring her back were continuing and hinted that a tussle was on in the high command.

While the Congress leadership has been silent on party member and former Hindi film matinee idol Rajesh Khanna's reported wish to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, party sources said that if he did cross over, the fallout would not be negligible.

"Rajesh Khanna may be a has-been superstar but he has done some good work for the Congress," they held, referring to his stint as an MP from the New Delhi parliamentary constituency in 1991 when he defeated the BJP's candidate and film star Shatrughan Sinha, now a BJP Rajya Sabha member.

Khanna's grouse against the leadership, especially against Gandhi, came in the wake of her move to make him the party candidate for the by-poll in the Kannauj parliamentary constituency. Sources confirmed that "he is very cut up with madam for pitting him as the party candidate from where Mulayam Singh Yadav's son Akhilesh is the favourite."

Khanna knows that he is bound to lose and that he wants "to teach the party leadership a lesson by quitting it," they added.

Sources said the next 10 days would be crucial for the Congress. "If two or three more senior leaders leave the party, you will know that the party's unity will be a thing of the past," they said.

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