Column

Now you see him. Now you don’t. Rahul Gandhi confounded members of the Congress core strategy group recently by asking to opt out of the party’s overblown ad campaign featuring him, his mother Sonia and Manmohan Singh as the three-in-one offer from India’s GOP (grand old party). Worried committee members, who were sure they had cleared the concept of the ads with Rahul before commissioning them, couldn’t understand what had bitten the Gandhi scion who was supposed to be the party’s trump card in the 2009 polls. After all, the projection of Rahul had even Advani trying to rub off his advancing years and pump iron at a Gandhinagar gym. But the 39 year old hope of the Congress party was adamant. He said he simply didn’t have the stature yet to be equated with his mother and the PM and asked that the hoardings carrying pictures of the three of them be withdrawn. Rahul’s change of heart midway through the campaign sent the party’s copywriters scurrying back to the drawing board to rework the ads. Note that the triumverate has shrunk to a duo now with only Sonia and Singh appearing on hoardings, banners, television clips and thepoll manifesto cover. The brahmastra has been put away for use in another election.

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Rahul is in reverse gear and Congress circles are in despair. Sonia Gandhi’sconsensual approach had erased memories of dynastic whimsicalities. Can someone please tell bewildered Congress rank and file what Rahul is up to? A leading BJP strategist who will remain unidentified had his own theory on the recent developments in the Congress. He held forth the other day at the durbar he hosts every now and then at the party office. According to this leader, the Congress is in the process of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. ``Jeeta hua election ko harne ki koshish ho rahi hai,’’ is how he put it. He said there is no other explanation for the party’s decision to reject pre-poll alliances with the SP in UP and RJD-LJP in Bihar and Jharkhand. Or for Rahul to withdraw from centrestage when the election process is in full swing. There’s a buzz in Congress circles about a plan B formulated by Rahul, which is to sit in the opposition (like his father Rajiv did in 1989 when V P Singh became prime minister) if the party doesn’t have the numbers to form a government. Let a tacky Third Front type government take charge and fall under the weight of internal contradictions. Meanwhile the Congress can rebuild its organisation and be ready for a mid-term poll that most political leaders believe will take place in 2011. That will be Rahul’s election, when he can make a bid for the PM’s post. So the thinking goes. If only politics were so well ordered.

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TAILPIECE
TTrinamool chief Mamata Banerjee is on the warpath with ailing Congress leader Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi’s wife, Deepa, who is fighting his Lok Sabha seat on his behalf. Funny, really, because Priya was Mamata’s friend and supporter in the Congress party. Political circles in West Bengal are atitter over the no-holds-barred fight between the two women, especially after a Trinamool rebel and local Muslim leader has decided to contest against Deepa. Priya’s wife believes that Mamata has put him up to defeat her and has complained to the Congress party’s Bengal-in-charge Pranab Mukherjee. From the other side, Mamata is grumbling daily about Deepa’s anti-Trinamool campaign. The CPI(M) doesn’t seem to figure on their horizons. One wonders who’s fighting who.