Sonia launches high-pitched attack on Vajpayee Govt

The Government succeeded in partially marring the Congress show by tabling the Kargil Review Committee Report in the Lok Sabha, despite the pandemonium. A Cabinet Minister admitted later that it was a bid to deflect media focus from the main Opposition party8217;s onslaught against the lifting of the order banning government employees in Gujarat from joining the RSS.

But apart from this, Parliament could not do any business on the first day of the Budget Session.

The hullabaloo gave Sonia a breather amidst the dissensions in her party which are expected to intensify when the Assembly results start coming in tomorrow. Her loyalists are bracing themselves for a possible challenge to her leadership if the results are as bad as feared.

But for today, her detractors were silent as she led her party on an unprecedented display of aggression. From leading the dharna in the morning to meeting Lok Sabha Speaker G M C Balayogi in the afternoon to protest against his rejection of the party8217;s adjournment motion on the RSS issue, she notched up a number of firsts in her second session as Leader of the Opposition.

Her party also set new standards of parliamentary behaviour for the main Opposition by walking out of a Business Advisory Committee meeting this afternoon as a mark of annoyance against the Government8217;s 8220;refusal8221; to allow its leaders to speak on the RSS issue. Congress leaders Madhavrao Scindia and Priya Ranjan Das Munshi were followed by Rup Chand Pal of the CPI M, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh RJD and P H Pandian AIADMK.

Tomorrow, however, is another day and Sonia loyalists may not find it as easy to divert attention from the Assembly results with similar disruptive tactics in Parliament. The Railway Budget is to be presented tomorrow afternoon and although the Congress officially threatened to hold it up, senior leaders privately admitted that disrupting the Budget would destroy the party8217;s credibility.

The strategy will be formalised tomorrow morning, but whatever the party does, it will not be able to overcome the blow of a poor election result. Sonia loyalists are hoping against hope that the results will be better than expected, thus fending off the expected challenge.

At the same time, the Congress intends to keep up the pressure on the Government over its links with the RSS in the coming days. And Sonia emphasised this in her address to the Congress Parliamentary Party this morning when she exhorted party MPs to 8220;relentlessly expose their Sangh Parivar and its Government hidden agenda in Parliament8221;. She also attacked the 8220;cultural terrorism8221; unleashed by the Parivar in Varanasi and in academic institutions such as the ICHR, NCERT, UGC and the ICSSR, apart from the Government8217;s design to tamper with the Constitution.

The Government, on its part, said it was ready for a discussion on the RSS ban issue, but under another rule. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan maintained that an adjournment motion was admitted in very rare cases. The last such motion to be discussed in the Lok Sabha was in 1995, he said, adding that it could also be argued that the matter was subjudice as the Gujarat Government order lifting the ban had been challenged in court.