NEW DELHI, April 4: Congress president Sonia Gandhi means business. And she wants everyone to know it. In her first interaction with a select group of media persons over tea at Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson Najma Heptulla's residence on Saturday, Sonia set the cat among the pigeons in the Congress announcing that defeated candidates will not get party nominations in the coming Rajya Sabha (RS) elections.The implications of this are clear: Trusted loyalist Arjun Singh will be denied a berth in Parliament via the RS because he lost the Hoshangabad Lok Sabha seat.As dazed senior Congress Working Committee (CWC) members who were present at the tea party digested the import of her statement, Sonia continued her informal chat with the Press, supremely unconcerned at the ripples she had created. "I regret what I did," she said, referring to the Rajya Sabha nominations given to defeated candidates Santosh Mohan Deb and Oscar Fernandes.Candidly admitting her inexperience in these matters, she explained thatthe decision on Deb and Fernandes was taken soon after she assumed charge of the party. She said she was not aware that her late husband Rajiv Gandhi had set a precedent of not nominating defeated Lok Sabha candidates to the RS.Sometimes shy - "I am a little reticent," she remarked - sometimes hesitant, Sonia was nevertheless quite relaxed through the 40-odd minutes she spent with the Press. She was bombarded with questions and TV cameras crowded her wherever she went. But she never lost her cool and disarmingly deflected the difficult queries to long-time aides K Karunakaran and Shiv Shankar.Why didn't the crowds at her election meetings translate into votes? "Ask Karunakaranji," she smiled. What does she think about coalition politics? Again Karunakaran was handed the floor. And the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) declared intention of reviewing the Constitution? She turned to Shiv Shankar. "Smaller states?" She threw up her hands, indicating enough is enough.But she made it clear that she didnot think that the BJP-led Government would last its full term and that she had apprehensions about the intentions of the BJP-led Government. "I don't trust them," she asserted. "They speak in different voices. We have offered to cooperate with them on issues. We will wait and watch but that does not mean we will sit back and relax." She added that she had "some suspicions" on the Constitutional review proposed by the Vajpayee Government but she said she was not ready to voice them just yet.While she parried the political questions, clearly unsure of herself, Sonia was not so diffident on matters relating to the Congress. In fact, if her readiness to talk party issues is any indication, the Congress is in for a major revamp after the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session on Monday to ratify her election as party president.She insisted on maintaining an air of secrecy about her plans - "I will talk about them on April 6th," she said. But she hinted that big changes were in the offing."TheCongress has lost touch with the people. It is a long, long process but we will get that back," she declared.Similarly, on the possible return of the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) to the Congress, Sonia was quite clear. "They are our friends. But they left the Congress. They were not thrown out," she answered in reply to a question on whether she would ask the TMC to come back to the Congress fold.She left as briskly as she came, leaving behind an impression of a woman who is determined to chart out her own course in Congress politics, with or without the help of those who claim to belong to her "coterie". Heptulla said later that this was only the first of the interactions Sonia planned with the media. "Just wait. She will set the nation on fire," breathed an exultant Kamal Nath.
