Congress old guard misses Sonia Gandhi, wants her back at campaign trail
With the first stage of balloting just ten days away, Congress president Sonia Gandhi's visible absence from the campaign trail is causing unease in the party.Although Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha reiterated to the IANS Thursday that the Congress is fighting the 2014 general elections under a collective leadership headed by party president Sonia Gandhi, her absence from the campaign trail is evident and is being talked about in the party.Her office is, indeed, being flooded with requests from state units all over the country to boost their candidates' chances at the hustings.That is quite expected, given that party vice-president Rahul Gandhi failed to be a major draw during the elections to five state assemblies in late 2013. At his rally in Dakshinpuri area of Delhi Nov 18 last year, then Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was seen pleading with the crowds to stay on as they started leaving as Rahul stood up to address them. Only a week later, Sonia's massively attended rally at Shastri Park in Delhi was an obvious hit.Sonia, known for her pragmatism in cobbling valuable alliances, is engineering a transition of power where her son Rahul hold the reins of the party. But the experiment has quite not paid off yet."Rahul is known to be stubborn and likes to take decisions by himself. His stubbornness is coming in way of stiching up alliances," said Manindra Nath Thakur, Associate Professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU.A case in point was the Lok Janashakti Party (LJP), which was hopeful of alliance with the Congress in Bihar. There have been reports that when Ramvilas Paswan, LJP chief, met Sonia Gandhi for seat sharing talks, he was advised that his son Chirag pursued the matter with Rahul. The result was that the LJP moved to the NDA fold.When asked about this, Congress leader Rashid Alvi told IANS he had no knowledge of the incident. He added, "Alliances are decided by the party after due consultations with senior members. It is a collective decision for which you cannot blame any one individual."Rahul is learnt to have miffed DMK chief Karunanidhi too, an erstwhile Congress ally. Karunanidhi recently said he was not shown enough "respect." Experts believe he was referring to Rahul having made no effort so far to meet him for a possible tie-up.Alvi was quick to defend Rahul on this score too. "DMK has been an important ally. If the party wants to join the UPA, it can," he said. He asserted that it was not too late in the day to find new allies, and there will be some key announcements in the days to come.