Sonia and her children step up, hoping to banish the ghosts

Desperately searching for a ‘‘feel good’’ factor of their own, the Congress party today grasped at the Delhi High Court order exonerating Rajiv Gandhi in the Bofors case. But the party’s jubilation paled before the emotion-packed Kodak moment, lasting barely a minute, choreographed by its First Family.

Sonia Gandhi, flanked by Rahul and Priyanka, stepped out of the 10, Janpath bungalow and, beneath a gnarled banyan tree, spoke of the ghosts that had haunted her family ‘‘for 17 years’’ and were now finally vanquished.

‘‘Today,’’ Sonia Gandhi said, ‘‘is a very special moment for me, for Rahul and Priyanka. (We have gone through) 17 years of abuse, 17 years of vilification, and 17 years of the worst character assassination campaign.’’

‘‘Throughout these 17 years, from the day the first accusation was made to the last indignity inflicted on us by the BJP and NDA government by Court has upheld what my husband had said all along.’’

She said her piece, choking on some of the words, and returned to the room where Rajiv Gandhi smiled down from a wall. This was no time, her aides told journalists later, to ask questions about the party’s election prospects, its failure to find allies, or about the fate of Karunakaran. It was a very ‘‘personal’’” moment that transcended mundane politics.

But even as Congressmen publicly exulted over the court verdict — at the CPP executive meeting Sonia Gandhi shared rasgollas with her colleagues and at the party’s customary briefing spokesman Satyavrat Chaturvedi railed against the ‘‘conspirators’’ who tarnished Rajiv’s fair name — some of them privately admitted that the latest twist in the Bofors saga could well be a double-edged sword.

For one thing, the last word has not been said on the case and a Supreme Court hearing is awaited. But more important, the Congress cannot go on an all-out offensive against those who ‘‘defamed’’ Rajiv Gandhi all those years ago because many of them are today partners and potential allies.

In her brief statement, Sonia Gandhi made a point to attack the BJP and the NDA government, and Chaturvedi too tried to focus the party’s attack against the BJP for its ‘‘campaign of lies’’ on Bofors.

But the fact is that the entire opposition in the late 1980s — V P Singh, Ramvilas Paswan, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Left parties and Jaipal Reddy included — had put Rajiv Gandhi on the mat because of Bofors. It would be impolitic to attack them and demand an apology right now but equally difficult to differentiate them from the BJP on the issue, say Congressmen.

For the Gandhi family, though, today’s verdict has come not only as a shot in the arm but at just the right moment. It will reinforce the ‘‘personal’’ over the ‘‘political’’ in the party’s election campaign with the Sonia-Priyanka-Rahul trio certain to add the theme of Rajiv’s restored honour to their existing repertoire of the Family’s record of ‘sacrifice’.