New Delhi, May 17
Congress members and their alliance partners went through some tense moments tonight when a deeply disturbed Sonia Gandhi expressed her willingness to step down if her foreign origin was becoming a source of embarrassment for them.
Determined allies, however, prevailed upon her to ignore the propaganda unleashed by the BJP and reassured her of their full support and cooperation. They insisted that there was no going back on their collective endorsement of her candidature as Prime Minister, particularly since the electoral mandate was in her favour.
It was then decided that Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who was unanimously chosen leader of the new alliance yesterday, would meet President Abdul Kalam tomorrow morning. After the completion of the initial preliminaries, she may be sworn in either on Wednesday or Thursday. There was some confusion about the day as party insiders wanted to pick an auspicious time for this occasion. She plans to go to Siriperumbudur on May 21, Rajiv Gandhi’s thirteenth death anniversary.
In order to end all rumour-mongering, it was decided to field senior leaders Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee to brief the press about Mrs Gandhi’s meeting with the President tomorrow.
The drama unfolded when some television channels put out reports about Mrs Gandhi having second thoughts about accepting the Prime Minister’s post. She was, apparently, upset over the BJP’s plans to undertake a nation-wide campaign against her and its possible ramifications on the law and order situation.
These reports gained credence as Mrs Gandhi was said to be closeted with her colleagues, Ahmed Patel and Ambika Soni along with her two children for over an hour. Congress MPs, who had been called to her residence for a special meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP), were kept waiting for two hours.
Tension levels mounted when there was no sign of Mrs Gandhi.
Several alliance partners, including RJD’s Laloo Prasad Yadav, Lok Janshakti’s Ram Vilas Paswan, CPM’s Sitaram Yechury and CPI leader A.B.Bardhan arrived at Mrs Gandhi’s residence at about 7.30 p.m. on hearing reports about her impending decision to step down. Frantic telephone calls were made when these reports did the rounds.
Former Prime Minister V.P. Singh, for instance, was learnt to have called up Mr Bardhan and asked him to rush to Mrs Gandhi’s residence to resolve this crisis.
These leaders were actually taken aback by these reports as they had just about returned from a meeting at Mrs Gandhi’s 10, Janpath residence where they had decided on a name for the new alliance and discussed other details about government formation.
It was learnt that the allies urged Mrs Gandhi not to buckle under the BJP pressure and that the only way was to tackle its campaign was to fight it out politically.
The meeting then discussed the modalities of government formation.
Although it was initially decided that all the pre-poll allies and the Left leaders would accompany her to Rashtrapati Bhavan tomorrow, it was subsequently decided otherwise.
After a careful reading of the President’s letter to Mrs
Gandhi, it was decide that she should first go alone since the letter had invited her in her capacity as the leader of the single largest party, the others could join her subsequently.
