Get The Brooms

• Alva, a Congress veteran, had spoken out against party, alleging that election tickets were on sale. Her party posts were taken away.
  
• But many in the party believe that there could be some substance to the questions she raised.
  
• During the Karnataka polls, rumour was rife of the sale of tickets.

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Veerappa Moily, chairperson of the Congress media cell, says "her charges are baseless, imaginary and an afterthought." In contrast, another senior functionary told Outlook: "Her language was that of a common worker. I’m getting calls from the Northeast, of which she was in charge, saying she is being victimised because she belongs to a minority." He agrees that Alva’s "timing was wrong, with six assembly elections just weeks away", but says she had been marginalised: party office-bearers for Maharashtra, a state she was in charge of, were appointed without consulting her. After the last assembly polls there, when former CM Sushilkumar Shinde was edged out by Vilasrao Deshmukh, Alva was taken by surprise. Her critics say she, too, is not above playing politics and was "fuelling" Narayan Rane’s dissidence against Vilasrao, with whom she has never had a cordial relationship.

But what is worrying a section in the Congress is not Alva’s losing both her general-secretaryship and place in the CWC and central election committee. But it is that all those who have endorsed Alva’s outburst—such as Karnataka leaders Siddaramaiah, C.K. Jaffer Sharief and R.L. Jalappa, or Yogendra Makwana of Gujarat—are all either OBCs, Dalits or belong to the minorities. Though it was felt the party could not afford to antagonise these sections, Makwana, who headed the party’s SC/ST cell, too was sacked on Thursday.

In one way, Margaret Alva stands for all that is wrong with the Congress. She is a product of privilege. As the daughter-in-law of Joachim and Violet Alva, the first Congress couple in Parliament, she came to Indira Gandhi’s notice and became a Rajya Sabha MP in 1974, when she was barely 32. She went on to serve four terms till 1998. In 1999, she contested on a Lok Sabha ticket and won. Under Rajiv Gandhi, she was MoS for youth, women and children and hit the headlines for pioneering a path-breaking blueprint for women’s empowerment. Narasimha Rao too made her a minister, giving her the powerful personnel portfolio. In short, ask some colleagues, what does she have to complain about?

Others, however, say all that still does not mean what she said should not be probed in the party’s larger interests. On the lawns of 24, Akbar Road, among camping ticket-seekers for the coming assembly polls, there is great sympathy for her. Also, admiration for the fact that a senior leader put her career on the line to speak out.

After all, in Bangalore in the months since the Karnataka elections, talk of selling of tickets has been commonplace. The names of then KPCC president Mallikarjun Kharge, then leader of the opposition Dharam Singh and key AICC observer Digvijay Singh have been bandied around. The complaint about Prithviraj Chavan, general secretary in charge of the state, was that he was a "helpless" bystander. Party sources add that R.V. Deshpande, who acted as "mediator" between ticket-seekers in Karnataka and those who took the money, has now been appointed KPCC president. For Alva, this, too, is a sore point, especially as both are from Karwar, and it is believed that Deshpande was earlier responsible for some of her electoral defeats.

With the axe having fallen on Alva and now also on Makwana, it may only benefit a party that has been making steady inroads into Congress territory. For the grapevine is abuzz that Alva may be heading towards the BSP.

By Smita Gupta and Sugata Srinivasaraju