Chacha bye, bye! Sonia takes over

The CWC continued its afternoon meeting after Kesri walked out and passed the resolution appointing Sonia in his place. A miffed Kesri then termed the move to oust him as “unconstitutional and illegal” maintaining that he continued to be party president as he had not quit yet.

But barring his acolyte Tariq Anwar, no one was listening and the party was soon swept into a new era headed by the fifth member of theNehru-Gandhi family as Congress president. Sonia follows Motilal Nehru, his son Jawahar Lal Nehru, grand-daughter Indira Gandhi and great grandson Rajiv Gandhi as head of the nation’s oldest party. She is the fourth foreign-born president of the party after Allan Octavian Hume, Nellie Sengupta and Annie Besant.

However, unlike them, she inherits a party full of problems and facing political irrelevance in large parts of the country: Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Punjab. And in an attempt to carry everybody with her, Sonia’s first decision was to keep all existing CWC members and AICC office-bearers in place until “fresh appointments are made”. She followed this up by calling on a livid Kesri at his house to bring about a patch-up.

And balancing Kesri’s rancour was the elation in the party which went into a frenzy of celebrations and kept up fireworks from the moment Kesri’s sacking was obvious till Sonia left the CWC meeting in the evening which she presided over for the first time.

In aday full of plotting, the CWC exhibited the gumption it didn’t show in its March 10 meeting and planned Kesri’s removal very early. Before the first CWC meeting at 11 am, most of its members met at Pranab Mukherjee’s house and drafted two crucial statements. One was an ultimatum to Kesri asking him to step down as he had announced and the other was a CWC resolution replacing him with Sonia.

The moment Kesri was handed over the ultimatum at 11 am, he went into a sulk and told CWC members not to “pressurise” him. He soon strode into his room and stayed put for the next two and a half hours. At the same time, the rest of the CWC met under the stewardship of party vice-president Jitendra Prasada and passed the resolution appointing Sonia as their chief.

This resolution read: “This meeting of the CWC takes note of the special situation arising out of the public announcement of Sitaram Kesri to resign from the office of the Congress president in favour of Sonia Gandhi at a press conference on March 9 at theAICC headquarters.

“After considering the special situation since this announcement the CWC feels that the organisational work has come to a standstill and that a hiatus has been created in the smooth functioning of the party. To remove the confusion and state of uncertainty leading to the irreparable and immense harm to the party, the CWC resolves to appoint Sonia Gandhi as Congress president in exercise of the powers conferred in clause J of Article 19 of the Congress constitution with immediate effect.”

The crucial clause in the party constitution reads: “To meet any special situation, the CWC shall have the power to take such action in the interest of the Congress as it may deem fit, provided however that if any action is taken which is beyond the power of the CWC as defined in this constitution, it shall be submitted as early as possible to the AICC for ratification but not later than six months.”

The scheduled AICC meeting takes care of this. Kesri’s fate was sealed even before this resolutionwas passed when 13 of the 17 CWC members signed his political death warrant. Ahmed Patel, Jitendra Prasada, Pranab Mukherjee, R K Dhawan, Arjun Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Sharad Pawar, Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy, A K Antony, Manmohan Singh, Meira Kumar, Oscar Fernandes and Madhavsinh Solanki all signed the ultimatum to Kesri. Later, J B Patnaik and Lalthanhawla approved it. Only Tariq Anwar was with Kesri.

Most of them were Kesri’s handpicked choices but it didn’t matter. Said the letter: “You have announced publicly on March 9 that you have resigned from the office of the president of the Congress and want Sonia Gandhi to take over at a meeting of the AICC. We wanted to raise this issue at the meeting of the CWC on March 10 but you had assured some of the members that you will settle this matter in a day or two.

“It was because of this assurance that this issue was not raised on March 10. Unfortunately till today no action has been taken by you in this regard as promised. In this background, the Congressworkers throughout the country are bewildered at this uncertainty. Therefore, we the members of the CWC, want this issue to be discussed today in the CWC meeting and fix a date for the AICC meeting.”

That sent Kesri packing but the implications of Sonia’s taking over are already clear. Kesri’s name plate was removed barely 30 minutes after he was sacked and the SPG came swarming into the AICC headquarters. CWC members, who used to drive in for meetings, were forced to get off on the road and walk in.