Column

Congress circles are still struggling to come to terms with the Margaret Alva episode. She’s the second Gandhi family loyalist in recent years to go off the deep end and snuff out an association that reaped rich rewards. Like Natwar Singh before her, Alva made the mistake of railing in front of television cameras. There was no going back after that.

Her final meeting with Sonia Gandhi last week lasted less than 10 minutes. Alva’s spluttering explanations about being quoted out of context (standard stuff for politicians after they’ve shot their mouth off) cut no ice with Gandhi who was visibly upset by what she saw as betrayal.

Puzzled party colleagues simply cannot understand what prompted Alva to bite the hand that fed her. It’s not as if she’s been a major grassroots leader in Karnataka with a mass following. Four of her five stints in Parliament were in the Rajya Sabha. She finally won a Lok Sabha election 1999, only to be defeated when she sought re-election in 2004.

Her main claims to political fame were the highly respected Congress family into which she married, her closeness to the Gandhis and her articulate, savvy personality that made her a natural choice to speak on gender issues. Those who know her attribute her outburst to simmering frustration that welled over uncontrollably. She had a long list of grouses, from not getting a Rajya Sabha ticket after her defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls to not being made a minister or a governor. But what may have been the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back is the rise and rise of Digvijay Singh who outstripped all other general secretaries, including Alva, to become general secretary number one.

Congress politics is a Byzantine maze in which one can easily get lost. But the latest buzz in the party is the growing power of Digvijay Singh who has emerged as chief political advisor to heir apparent Rahul Gandhi. It was he, as head of the screening committee, who laid down the rule denying tickets to relatives in the Karnataka assembly polls. Again, it was he, as head of the screening committee for distribution of tickets in Rajasthan, who decided to hand out nominations to at least six relatives of retired Congress leaders. What Alva failed to see, when she erupted in rage, was that all these relatives have had political experience, unlike her son Nivedith, on whose behalf she had unsuccessfully lobbied and whose only link to politics is the family name.

As the transition of power from mother to son begins within the Congress, Alva probably feared for her future in the emerging new dispensation. She had managed to establish a comfortable working equation with Sonia Gandhi’s political advisor, Ahmed Patel, and got herself several plum assignments as general secretary. A rival power centre in Digvijay Singh was proving too complicated to handle. The process of
effecting a generational change is never easy, particularly in family-run concerns where loyalty has an unrealistic premium value.

TAILPIECE
After Thursday’s heavy snowfall in the upper reaches of Kashmir cut off many areas that go to polls next week, political parties are questioning the Election Commission’s wisdom in putting J&K through elections in winter. Embarrassed EC officials have made the preposterous claim that they had factored in the weather when they decided polls dates and had concluded that they could beat the snow. Maybe they should have consulted the Met department instead of relying on an in-house weather forecast.

Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net