When it seemed that the Congress was aggressively taking on the Government on Ayodhya, came the party's turnaround in Parliament: it dropped its proposed adjournment motion on the temple issue. Congress MPs still wonder why Sonia Gandhi decided to backtrack even though there was enough confusion within the ruling front to cash in on. Did she think that the party was going a bit too far? Or was it because of the internal politics of the Congress?Though Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee did not name the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), he gave enough indication in Parliament on Monday that his Government would deal firmly with them if they attempted to build a temple at Ayodhya when the matter is yet to be decided by the court. But Home Minister L.K. Advani defended the RSS and the VHP a day later in the Lok Sabha saying that the ongoing work on stones and pillars for the Ram temple in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh did not constitute any offence.Vajpayee was saved froma more embarrassing moment as the Congress did not give notice for the promised adjournment motion on Tuesday. The main Opposition party failed to exploit a favourable opportunity, largely because of the prevailing confusion in the party, and partly because of Congress president Sonia Gandhi's politics of one upmanship. Also it is not yet sure about how far the party should go in cornering the Government until it feels certain about forming an alternative government. In the process, the contradiction between the stand of the Prime Minister and the Home Minister was glossed over.In the absence of a debate, either through an adjournment motion or in some other form, the Government could get away without having to clarify on this difference or the clause in the BJP manifesto that the Government would `facilitate' building the temple. As a result, the BJP-led Government was the sole beneficiary and the Congress a loser and suspect in the eyes of its MPs as well as the `secular parties'. The fiasco exposed theCongress and the extent to which it is ready to compromise mainly on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and on cornering the BJP on the Ayodhya issue.Why did the Congress not give the notice for an adjournment motion on the VHP's confessed move to build the temple? After all, Sonia Gandhi had said she was not satisfied with the Prime Minister's response to her letter to him. Senior Congress leaders, after her remarks, had even got in touch with the Left and Samajwadi Party leaders soliciting their support for the adjournment motion. But no one formally explained to them how and why the move got aborted. (While there was limited interaction between the Congress and other secular parties, there seems to have been a big gap between the Congress leader and party MPs.)Many Congress members actually are agitated over the party's climb-down. And no one knows who guided Sonia Gandhi. ``Maybe she was convinced that overstretching Ayodhya will have a Hindu consolidating effect and work to the advantage of theBJP and the Hindutva forces,'' said a Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member. ``But what I cannot understand is the party's announcement of its intention to move the adjournment motion even when a section had advised her against doing this,'' he added. Within the party, the murmur is more on the leadership's failure to take the MPs into confidence than BJP's `ambiguity' on the temple issue. ``Sonia Gandhi is the chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party also. She dashed off a letter to the Prime Minister drawing his attention towards the VHP move. No MP was consulted. We got to know about it only when we received a copy of the letter with Vajpayee's reply. Even after that, we were told who all will be speaking on the adjournment motion to expose the Government. And now we stand exposed,'' said a three-term Lok Sabha member.Incidentally, the party leader in the Lok Sabha, Sharad Pawar, has virtually remained an outsider. This time, he has been away in Baramati for more than a fortnight following adeath in his family and he is believed to have expressed his inability to visit Delhi when Sonia Gandhi wanted to consult him. But the hype on Ayodhya, some Pawar supporters feel, was to `save her own skin' on the dismiss-DMK demand raised by AIADMK members in Parliament. And Ayodhya provided a parallel issue and an outlet.They feel that having brought down the I.K. Gujral government purely on the basis of the interim report of the Jain Commission earlier, the Congress has not even demanded so far that the BJP Government present the final report, submitted in early March, before Parliament. Sonia Gandhi, they allege, deliberately avoided joining the AIADMK demand as in that case, she would have lost the support of 83 Lok Sabha MPs belonging to the United Front whose support would be crucial than Jayalalitha's 17 MPs in the event of a move by the Congress to form a government.The Ayodhya issue could have provided a `secular umbrella' for all outside the BJP-led coalition, but there was no guarantee thatthe adjournment motion would have been accepted by the Chair. But what is mysterious is the manner of raking it, giving it up and not taking the MPs into confidence. And equally mysterious is the manner the Congress leaders including hawks like Arjun Singh and Jitendra Prasada - both CWC members - kept quiet on the final report of the Jain Commission.The present session of Parliament has shown that if compromise is a weapon for the ruling party, it is so for the Opposition as well.
