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Sonia plays the sympathy card

George Iype in New Delhi

The turmoil in the Congress continued on Tuesday as Sonia Gandhi rejected pleas to withdraw her resignation while four chief ministers and numerous party office-bearers quit their posts en masse to mount pressure on her to once again take up the party leadership.

In a well-orchestrated move to generate countrywide sympathy for her, Sonia loyalists worked overtime since Monday night to ensure that the "Sonia wave" automatically doused the flames of controversy over her foreigner status.

Thus, Sonia's supporters deliberately hyped the crisis up by asking party office-bearers from across the country to send their resignation letters "to sympathise and anguish" with the Congress president over the attack on her foreign origins by party dissenters Sharad Pawar, P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar.

Congress insiders disclosed that her decision to quit was a well-crafted ploy to generate public sympathy, neutralise the rebel trio's demands and win a fresh endorsement of her leadership of the Congress.

"It is a pre-planned drama to help Sonia consolidate her position within the party and to ensure that there will be no threat to her prime ministerial candidature during campaign time," a Congress source said.

The architects of the plan were senior leaders and her chief advisors Arjun Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and R D Pradhan.

In fact, her emotional resignation letter was said to have been crafted by Mukherjee on Monday though the Congress president claimed that she wrote the letter after the Congress Working Committee meeting on May 15.

Party sources said such a plan would ensure that she would remain at the helm of the Congress forever. To ensure that this has official sanction, leaders like Jitendra Prasada, K Karunakaran, Kamal Nath and Madhavrao Scindia requested her on Tuesday to convene an immediate meeting of the All India Congress Committee.

Despite her public posture that she is uninterested in once again heading the party, Sonia aides said she would certainly take back her resignation later this week, most probably on May 21, the eight death anniversary of her husband Rajiv Gandhi.

"Sonia has played her cards very well. The emotional reaction to Soniaji's resignation from across the country proves that the Congress will be rudderless if she leaves," a senior CWC member told Rediff On The NeT.

But demands from senior leaders for the immediate expulsion of Pawar, Sangma and Anwar notwithstanding, neither Sonia nor most CWC members are in favour of throwing out the trio from the party.

Sonia has made it very clear to her aides that she would not expel Pawar and others for raising the banner of revolt. She is said to be willing to make up with the three rebels if they are ready for a rapprochement. But if they continue to ridicule her on her Italian origins, she feels public resentment from within the party would force Pawar, Sangma and Anwar to leave the party on their own.

Her emissaries Kamal Nath and Oscar Fernandes spoke at length over the telephone to Pawar and met Anwar to settle the unprecedented crisis plaguing the party.

Both Pawar and Anwar have refused to budge from their stand that she should not be projected as the Congress's prime ministerial candidate. But many in the party believe she will in all likelihood win over Sangma who is expected to return to New Delhi from a private visit to the United States on Wednesday.

Her emissaries have also spoken to Sangma in the US, informing him of the chaos which their controversial letter has created in the party. Sangma is said to have promised them that he is willing to meet Sonia to sort out the differences.

Meanwhile, Pawar's supporters in Delhi said their leader is not ready for any compromise as his plan to float a new party will be in place in the coming days. "Pawar has made it very clear that Sonia lacks the fitness to govern this country because of the foreign tag on her. So there is no question of compromise on this issue," a close aide of Pawar told Rediff On The NeT.

"We want to make it very clear that Pawar and others never asked for the resignation of Sonia as Congress president. But by stepping down as party president, Sonia has proved that her ambition was to become the prime minister," he said.

He disclosed that Pawar's rebellion has the "active consent and advice of former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao." Another former prime minister, Chandra Shekhar, is actively campaigning for Pawar to get more support from within the Congress and also to form a grand alliance of regional parties with the Maharashtra leader at the helm.

As Pawar is in no mood to make up with Sonia, many believe if he breaks away from the Congress it will be disastrous for the party on the eve of a general election, especially in crucial states like Maharashtra.

Some Congress leaders also fear that the so-called sympathy wave being created by her resignation is momentary and the issue of her Italian origin would continue to nag the party in the coming months.

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