Ahead of Sonia visit, cracks in Cong’s last-standing bastion in N. India

Meanwhile Yadav’s supporters started accusing some senior party leaders like Cabinet minister Vijay Laxmi Sadho and minister of state Bala Bachchan, of working to sabotage Sonia’s proposed visit to the ‘‘cooperative king’s’’ home turf.However others in the party allege that Yadav is trying to manipulate the Congress chief’s MP visit for ‘‘personal aggrandizement’’ instead of strengthening the party. ‘‘He is misusing the Congress president’s name to settle personal scores,’’ says one of them.

The war of words among senior MP Congressmen seems to have unnerved the High Command which has asked Chief Minister Digvijay Singh to intervene and report back to it. Yesterday Singh summoned Sadho, Bachchan and other ministers of Ujjain and Indore division in connection with preparations for Sonia’s visit. He has asked all his ministers to make Sonia’s visit to the state, the first after she was elected AICC president, a grand success.

Singh will fly to Delhi on Tuesday to report his assessment of the situation to AICC general secretary Prabha Rau (who is in-charge of the MP Congress unit).Meanwhile according to a recent change Sonia schedule, she will now visit Beora in the Rajgarh Lok Sabha constituency represented by Chief Minister’s younger brother Laxman Singh before going to Khargone to inaugurate a cotton mill and an engineering college. This change in the Congress chief’s itinerary indicates that the party High Command wants to dispel the impression that Yadav had won any special favour from Sonia. It is also significant as according to the original schedule Khargone was the only place Sonia was to visit and hence the Yadav camp was projecting it as a symbol of its leaders proximity with the former and was openly claiming it a prelude to his induction in the new CWC.

Though Singh’s intervention may temporarily diffuse the crisis, the tone and tenor of leaders in the rival camps indicates that the feud will continue.

While the Yadav camp is insisting on disciplinary action against Bachchan and Sadho, his opponents have enlisted the support of other senior leaders like former Union minister Kamal Nath and the other MP Deputy Chief Minister Jamuna Devi to ‘‘expose Subhash Yadav’’.

Yadav himself was not available for comments but an MPCC official confirmed that a complaints of ‘non-cooperation’ against Bachchan and others have been received by them. ‘‘Devas Mayor Jai Singh has been asked to inquire into the matter and submit his report to the PCC within a week,’’ he added.

Bachchan also called on Digvijay Singh to clarify his position in this regard. According to him, Yadav had not even informed him about the meeting which he has been accused of boycotting. ‘‘It is Subhash Yadav who is violating the code of conduct for the ministers and senior Congressmen and not me,’’ he told the Chief Minister.