It’s a tall order to avoid sycophancy in the Congress

Such was the hype surrounding Sonia’s nomination that by late evening as many as 74 proposals had been received by the party’s Central Election Authority (CEA) chief Ram Niwas Mirdha in her favour. From early morning, her loyalists and the party’s stalwarts including Digvijay Singh, S M Krishna and Madhavrao Scindia had lined up at 10, Janpath to procure her signatures on the nomination forms.

The day-long exercise bordered on the ridiculous as Mirdha sat in a makeshift stage at the AICC headquarters to receive nomination after nomination in Sonia’s favour, from batches of party leaders/PCC delegates from different states.

And as drums and nagaras played non-stop since the morning and a motley crowd of “Indian Youth Congress workers” shouted pro-Sonia slogans, proposals for Sonia’s candidature kept streaming in, with individual states trying to outdo each other in a petty loyalty game. Rajasthan led the way with as many as 15 nominations for her while Bihar came second with eight and Punjab third with six. Most of the other states such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Haryana remained tied at a respectable two nominations each while Uttar Pradesh — from where Sonia as well as her possible challenger, Prasada, hail — finished at four.

Meanwhile the Lady in the limelight remained confined to 10, Janpath. She stepped out of her house for a very brief while in the afternoon, more to oblige photographers.

The “circus”, complete with gaudily-attired horsemen and bandwalas, went on without her. Young lads sporting IYC T-Shirts with the slogan “North, East, South West, Sonia all the best” embossed on them swamped the party headquarters from early morning. They were not very sure who to hoot for, sometimes it was Sonia but other times it was IYC chief Randip Surjewala.