Sonia Gandhi

There are few aspects of the election campaign that Sonia has personally handled and the photo input is one of them. The other is speech writing.

Against the general belief that Sonia’s Sriperumbudur speech was penned by a close confidant, party sources say she wrote it herself. She, may, of course, have asked for suggestions. As former Minister Shiela Dixit said: “I had given her a few points on how the Indianness and secularism should be a central theme and I find they were incorporated. Others too may have given some ideas.”

Besides such integral inputs, Sonia is known to have left the nitty-gritty of mounting the campaign to the All India Congress Committee (AICC). This is something that took the party big-wigs by surprise and to more than one former Minister who had queued up asking for “guidance,” Sonia said: “Aare bhai, you have a system in the party. You decide. I do not have to be consulted about every small thing.”

Thus, AICC’s campaign committee headed by vice-president Jitendra Prasada, which has a sub-committee to plan the tours of VIP campaigners, began devoting almost all its time to planning Sonia’s itinerary.

Besides Prasada and party treasurer Ahmed Patel, five members of the sub-committee emerged as the core group: Convenor of the campaign committee Ghulam Nabi Azad, former Ministers Pranab Mukherjee and Margaret Alva and former Youth Congress president, Ambika Soni.

Since December 29 — the day Sonia announced her decision to campaign the core group held a series of brainstorming sessions at 24, Akbar Road. Then, two meetings were held at 10, Janpath between the group and Sonia. Again, Priyanka was around to see her mother’s election campaign, finally, take off the ground.

At these strategy meetings, Sonia gave an impression of someone raring to go. “She simply didn’t want to lose time. She was very enthusiastic about including as many election meetings as possible. Therefore for the second “intensive” phase (February 1-26) she will be addressing five-seven meetings a day.”

In all, Sonia will clock 100 meetings, but this does not seem to deter her. No special requests for arrangements or diet have come from her.

Ambika Soni says that seeing Sonia’s ardour, she is reminded about how, back in 1971, she would pore over the voters list and work behind-the-scenes in drafting Indira Gandhi’s campaign. “She has asked us to avoid wasting time in receptions and try and squeeze in as many public meetings instead.”Sonia has evidently made it clear that for logistical support, she would rely on the PCC network rather than have leaders from Delhi travel with her.

Besides her secretary, Vincent George, only Priyanka is expected to accompany her for some meetings. “Don’t overlap effort and follow me around,” is the advice she has given more than once to her campaign managers.

By the time the second phase takes off, the inputs are likely to be augmented by computerised constituency profiles.