For the past week, even at 2 am, Congress MP Jitendra Prasada's home is alive with activity, as senior Congress leaders-Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh, Orissa pcc chief J.B. Patnaik, MP Kamal Nath-pop in and out. Everyone is on edge, in anticipation of Prasada announcing his challenge to Congress president Sonia Gandhi in the party elections early next month.
"A contest for party president is not a challenge," says Prasada, looking cheerful. And well he might. The Congress leader is, for once, in a win-win situation. If, as expected, he loses, Prasada will become a rallying point for dissidents who must from time to time, be mollified by the party high command. And if he's persuaded not to contest, it will be at a heavy price.
Prasada has cleverly positioned himself as the champion of the party worker; "Jiti bhai" stands for inner-party democracy and the empowerment of the karyakarta who doesn't have a voice in party affairs. The irony of Prasada, charged with rigging polls in erstwhile Congress president Sitaram Kesri's favour in 1997, sticking up for free and fair elections is not lost on his detractors.
But he has touched a nerve. The lack of trust and the widening gulf between the party workers and its leadership is something even Congress election authority (cea) chief Ram Niwas Mirdha acknowledges: "My task is to convince the party worker that the election will, in actual fact, be free and fair".
Prasada has drafted a letter to party workers, in which he exhorts them to take the initiative to keep the spirit of the party alive and to treat the organisational elections as a test case. He points to the shrinking base of the Congress, the blurring of its ideological vision and dwindling participation in popular causes. Only by "restoring the dignity and honour of ordinary workers" and allowing them full participation in the electoral process can divisive forces be fought. "The Congress worker must be allowed to prevail," is his plea.
The ham-handed way the Arjun Singh-Vincent George duo, ably assisted by Oscar Fernandes, are managing the elections has given Prasada plenty of ammunition, some of which he's already used in his letters to Mirdha: "A group is trying to manage the elections... decisions are being taken by an aicc office-bearer instead of the cea".
Some of the coterie's moves have been so blatant as to be silly, like appointing Arjun loyalists (easily identifiable as Congress-T) as returning officers. Or delaying the final list of aicc delegates-the electoral college for the post of Congress president-so as not to allow a challenger time to garner support. Also, the time allowed for filing nominations is three days but that for withdrawal is a week, thus giving Sonia's managers an opportunity to persuade other contenders to desist.
Those who know Prasada are aware he is more comfortable as a backroom boy, despite the many high-profile posts he has held: Uttar Pradesh pcc chief, political secretary to P.V. Narasimha Rao when he was PM and party vice-president under Sitaram Kesri. He was ejected by Sonia. Aware that she would not give him a Rajya Sabha seat, he contested successfully from Shahjahanpur in UP.
Prasada would still prefer to prop up a challenge to Sonia rather than descend into the arena himself. But the demise of Rajesh Pilot has deprived him of a credible shoulder from which to fire his salvos against the coterie (like all disgruntled Congressmen, he never targets Sonia directly).
He enjoys the support of several Congress leaders unhappy with the coterie, among them J.B. Patnaik, K. Karunakaran, Vijayabhaskara Reddy and C.K. Jaffer Sharief. Contests are expected in several states, instead of a unanimous endorsement of the incumbent president's nominees. The cpp (Congress Party in Parliament) elections set a precedent, in which two of the three "non-official" candidates won and one came within a hair's breadth of making it.
For all that he is a reluctant rebel and by far less well-known a public figure than the late Pilot, Sonia has more cause to fear Prasada. Pilot, for all his fulminations, was easily managed. He was what detractors termed a sarkari rebel-a leader who would serve as a focus for dissident activity within the party but could be silenced by a few sops.
Party leaders say a combative Sonia will not dicker with Prasada. She might dislike him and want him annihilated, but her hands are tied. She cannot expel him for writing letters to party office-bearers and workers or for contesting against her in the organisational elections. But the very fact of his candidature is a blow against the coterie and the myth of Sonia's invulnerability.
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