Chacha preempts Sonia, gifts Lok Sabha ticket to Dhawan

NEW DELHI, Jan 2: Chafing at the apparent shift in the Congress command centre to 10, Janpath, party president Sitaram Kesri today hit back ...

NEW DELHI, Jan 2: Chafing at the apparent shift in the Congress command centre to 10, Janpath, party president Sitaram Kesri today hit back by swiftly announcing three nominees to the Lok Sabha from Delhi including CWC member R K Dhawan.

Dhawan’s name was rushed through in a sudden decision by Kesri to try and prevent his candidature from being scrapped at a later stage when Sonia Gandhi would have been in control. And to give it some credence, two more names were added to the short list, the beneficiaries being sitting MPs Meira Kumar from Karol Bagh and Jai Prakash Aggarwal from Chandni Chowk.

According to the prescribed procedure, the concerned PCC has to first recommend candidates to the Central Election Committee (CEC) which is the CWC converted to the poll panel. The CEC then finalises the list. But in this case, nothing of this sort was done. The CEC is slated to meet to shortlist nominees only next week.

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Congress leaders said, on the condition of anonymity, that Kesri was not in a mood to take a chance where his loyalist Dhawan would have missed out later. Dhawan, who began his career as a staunch loyalist of Indira Gandhi, later fell out with Rajiv Gandhi because of his alleged involvement in Indira’s assassination.

The Justice Thakkar Commission, which looked into the aspects of the killing, had said the “needle of suspicion” pointed at Dhawan. He was then kept out of the power centre by Rajiv for a long while. After the imposed hiatus, Dhawan climbed back and became a CWC member in the elections held in the Tirupati plenary of the AICC in 1991.

It is being suspected that Dhawan may not have made it to the Lok Sabha list of Congress nominees if Kesri had waited for next week. It is said that Sonia has strong feelings against Dhawan. The Kesri camp thus felt that a pre-emptive move is necessary and thus the rush to announce his nomination. And since giving out just one name would have invited ridicule, it was decided to renominate the two sitting Congress MPs from Delhi.

This itself was a shift in strategy. Meira Kumar was initially asked to explore the possibility of contesting from Sasaram, the constituency of her father Jagjivan Ram. Once her name was added to that of Dhawan, Aggarwal’s candidature was certain.

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Clearly, the proxy war between Kesri and Sonia is not over. The first incident was when Kesri altered the arrangement worked out by Sonia between rebel West Bengal leader Mamata Banerjee and WBPCC chief Somen Mitra. Sonia had stayed up till midnight to hammer a patch-up which was promptly undone by Kesri in Hyderabad the next day.

A peeved Mamata went ahead with the registration of her outfit, the Trinamul Congress, and was expelled by the AICC for this. And by the time Sonia decided to take an active part in Congress affairs, it was seen as too late by rebels like Mamata, Ajit Panja, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Jagannath Mishra and others.

Now, the battle is escalating. With the selection of candidates round the corner in the Congress, the Kesri camp is ready for an arduous fight with 10, Janpath.