Desperate Congmen fall at Sonia’s feet for leadership

NEW DELHI, December 18: While pressure is growing on the Congress Working Committee (CWC) to meet soon and pass a resolution asking Sonia G...

NEW DELHI, December 18: While pressure is growing on the Congress Working Committee (CWC) to meet soon and pass a resolution asking Sonia Gandhi to take over the leadership of the party, following sundry splits in various directions, the party has received quite a few setbacks.

Now, with hardcore Sonia loyalist Mani Shankar Aiyar today dissociating himself from the party and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nadendla Bhaskara Rao resigning from the party, the list of woes seems to be growing day by day.

Indirectly, this amounts to lack of confidence in Kesri’s leadership especially after the collapse of negotiations with AIADMK leader J Jayalalitha which led to her alliance with the BJP in the State.

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“Kesri messed up the entire negotiations. I warned him thrice last week that he must clinch the deal with Jayalalitha or she will slip away to the BJP. Kesri’s incompetence has led to the completely unacceptable development of the BJP getting a toehold in Tamil Nadu. The blame lies at his door,” Aiyar said today after “dissociating” from the Congress.

Basically, Aiyar will not attend to any party work under Kesri’s leadership. However, he has left a window open by not quitting from the party membership preferring to wait for the official party reaction before doing anything else. Aiyar said he had informed Sonia of his decision following which he spent the day in the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.

But if AICC general secretary incharge of Tamil Nadu, R K Dhawan is to be believed, Aiyar is in trouble. “He went away because he will not win the election. If it was a principled decision, he should have left earlier,” Dhawan said, adding that the AIADMK-BJP deal was a “setback” to the Congress.

CWC member Kotla Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy, who was entrusted with the job of talking to Jayalalitha, was away in Andhra Pradesh and is slated to return here on December 23.