NEW DELHI, OCT 21: The Congress high command has decided not to join issue with senior party leader Jitendra Prasada on his allegations of irregularities in the ongoing party elections and his call to workers to ensure free and fair polls.Apparently realising the sensitive nature of the issues raised by Prasada in his letter, party chief Sonia Gandhi's loyalists feel that to take on him will only make him that much more a ``martyr'' among party cadres. Moreover, to respond to his charges from the party's official platform would also mean a tacit admission that the issues he has raised are genuine, thereby giving him that much more credibility. The contest for the party chief's post would then openly become a Sonia-versus-Prasada show.Sonia desisted from referring to Prasada's charges in her speech at a rally in Kanpur today. And all that party spokesman Anil Shastri was willing to say, when contacted today for his comment on Prasada's letter, was that being a CWC member, Prasada had had ample opportunity to raise these issues in the party's highest policy-making body.``If his aim is to work for strengthening the party, the letter he has addressed to party workers doesn't appear to do so since it sends confusing signals,'' Shastri added.The strategy of the Sonia camp, say party sources, is to allow the senior leader to vent his ire at the present dispensation instead of taking him head-on. At the same time, however, they have begun a whisper campaign in party circles that Prasada is making all this noise about the party's ebbing fortunes and unfair elections simply to bargain a good position for himself ``like he did during the last party elections (in 1997) under Sitaram Kesri, where he bargained hard to become the party's vice-president''.But Sonia loyalists are themselves divided on the issue of a contest against her for the party president's post. While a section feels that if Prasada or anybody else fights against her it would not affect her image as the contender is bound to lose, others feel her election should be unanimous since no one in the party has contested against the Nehru-Gandhi family. (The only exception reportedly is that of Purushottam Das Tandon, who stood for the party chief's post against Nehru when he was the prime minister in the early '50s, and lost).However, while the official reaction to Prasada maybe deliberately toned down, some of Sonia's followers have jumped to her defence. Yesterday, it was former PCC chief Salman Khurshid, who questioned Prasada's locus standi in making his charges as he himself was instrumental in many of the party's disastrous decisions such as its alliance with the BSP in Uttar Pradesh during the past Assembly elections.Today, it was Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh who refuted Prasada's allegations. ``The present elections are no different from the ones held in the party in 1997, when Prasada was in a key post,'' he told reporters here, adding that the central leadership couldn't be blamed for the party's decline in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, as Prasada had charged.Prasada says dump RabriSenior Congress leader Jitendra Prasada today expressed serious concern over the killing of innocent people in Bihar and said the high command should consider the demand of a large section of partymen from the state to withdraw support to the RJD government. Prasada told reporters in New Delhi that one of the conditions before extending support to the RJD government had been that it would ensure improvement in the law and order situation. ``I hope that the party high command would take cognisance of the large-scale killings and sentiments expressed by agitated partymen on the development.'' - PTI
