Sonia back in charge, chairs meet on UP polls

Mtoday news / PTI

New Delhi, Sept 15: A week after returning from the US following surgery, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday attended Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting and finalised tickets for some seats for the next year’s Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.

 

But the drift within the Congress and the Government in the last two months exposed the dependence of the party on Sonia.

"Can you replace a leadership? Leadership is leadership," said senior Congress leader Oscar Fernandes.

The fierce show of loyalty is expected coming from a Congressman, but it also exposes the excessive dependence on one person - Sonia Gandhi.

After taking over the charge, Sonia chose the politically significant Uttar Pradesh elections as her first task. The meeting attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh decided tickets for about 61 seats.

"Sonia Gandhi was very happy. I was unable to realise that she had a surgery," said Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh after the meet.

Sonia held the meeting just a day after the debate of Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi as prime ministerial candidates in 2014 was thrown up. The sense of drift and loss of direction within the party came even as BJP seemed to be gaining the upper hand.

In Sonia’s absence, the Congress almost handed over the cash-for-votes scam issue to the BJP in Parliament.

Factionalism within the Congress has also come out in open, with many MPs pointing fingers at senior ministers for failure to deal with the Anna movement.

Coalition trouble has also surfaced, with Mamata Banerjee embarrassing the Prime Minister by refusing to go to Bangladesh at the last moment.

It also showed that even the four-member committee set up by her under Rahul Gandhi has failed to stand in for Sonia, who was away for treatment.

Rahul has often spoken about inner party democracy. But, Sonia is back to work, exposing once again how increasingly dependent the party is just on her.