NEW DELHI, April 29: Afraid to strike and hesitant to reward - that is the message of Sonia Gandhi's much-awaited ``revamp'' of the Congress party. A balancing act, it is a signal that for all her brave words at the recent All India Congress Committee session in Delhi, the new Congress president has no option but to tread cautiously, at least till such time when she can get a grip over the party. She had burnt her fingers with her maiden move of nominating defeated candidates to the Rajya Sabha elections and two out of the three - Santosh Mohan Deb and N C Parashar - lost.Sonia has made it amply clear that there are no hot favourites as far as she is concerned and dispelled impressions about the clout of the ``coterie'' around her. Arjun Singh and M L Fotedar, who are believed to have been advising her politically, do not figure anywhere, though the Congress grapevine was agog with the possibility that Singh may be elevated as number two in the organisation as working president or avice-president.Instead, Sonia has dispensed with the post of the vice-president and signalled to Congressmen in Uttar Pradesh that she does not need intermediaries. Fotedar may of course be given the Rajya Sabha nomination from Madhya Pradesh when elections take place there in a couple of months.The three women, who were considered close to her Margaret Alva, Najma Heptullah and Shiela Dixit have not made it to the party positions. The ones she has promoted are Ambika Soni, Meira Kumar, Kumari Selja and Usha Meena, and the last three of them are Dalit or tribal.Contrary to expectation, she has retained R K Dhawan and Tariq Anwar as general secretaries. When her name was proposed in the Congress Working Committee to take over the party, Tariq Anwar had walked out of the meeting along with Sitaram Kesri and Dhawan had expressed his reservations.She has also not needled Sharad Pawar. Nor has she given him importance. She has nominated Sushil Kumar Shinde to the CWC, appointed V N Gadgil as specialinvitee to the CWC and made Sudhir Sawant secretary. These men have been opposed to Pawar but Shinde is not an opponent of the S B Chavan or the Sudhakarrao Naik variety.And she told the Maratha leader about her plans in advance during her discussion with him.The appointment of Kesri as a permanent invitee to the CWC also goes to show that she is not prepared to open too many flanks as yet but wants to create an impression of taking the party with her. The position of a permanent invitee, who is neither allowed to speak without the permission of the chair or to vote, is nothing to rave about for a former party president, but she has shown that she is not doing a `Kesri' on him. Kesri had kept his predecessor Narasimha Rao out of the CWC.From all accounts she was planning to nominate Narasimha Rao to the CWC but changed her mind after the observations by the Supreme Court in the JMM case. The two vacancies in the party's apex body are carrots she has dangled before potential dissidents.She hasstruck against three leaders - JB Patnaik, Pranab Mukherjee and Mizo leader Lalthawnhala, who had to make way from P A Sangma also from the north east. The K Karunakaran report severely indicted Patnaik for the party's debacle in Orissa and is a prelude to the shake-up that is now in the offing in the Orissa Congress. Sonia is in touch with Mamata Banerjee and the downgrading of Pranab Mukherjee is a signal to the stormy petrel of West Bengal that the Congress would welcome her back. Mamata is believed to have indicated that she will take stock of the situation after the panchayat elections in the state.While she has chosen a younger group of 10 secretaries, including Mani Shankar Aiyer, it is not as if she has elevated any of them to the position of general secretaries. She has also chosen an articulate (and camera-friendly) team of spokespersons in Ambika Soni, Salman Khurshid and Ajit Jogi.She may make Rajesh Pilot and P A Sangma, party general secretaries in the coming days, if Madhav Rao Scindiacan be persuaded to go to Madhya Pradesh as Chief Minister in view of the impending polls in the state, and Tariq Anwar is sent as the PCC chief in Bihar. The party report on Madhya Pradesh is believed to have made a case for change in the state.For those who expected sweeping changes after her words at the April 6 AICC session, the Sonia revamp is something of an anti-climax. But it does indicate that she plans to promote women, Dalits and tribals, and phase out older leaders.
