Author: Hiranmay Karlekar
Publication: Newstime
Date: November 19, 2000
There was never any doubt that Sonia
Gandhi would be over-whelmingly elected Congress president on November
12. The reasons for this are well-known and require only the briefest
of reiteration the Congress's fixation about being led by members of the
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which should perhaps now be re-christened Nehru-Maino-Gandhi
dynasty, Jitendra Prasada's lack of the kind of national stature required
to challenge her, and the proverbial spinelessness and opportunism of Congress
leaders which always make them genuflect before the likely winner.
Yet, the Congress presidential election - held all over India except Assam
and Kerala was conducted in a manner that reduced it to an utter farce,
reminiscent of the kind that have always confirmed Third World tyrants
in power by 99.9 per cent of the votes polled whenever they have chosen
to hold elections.
Manipulated
The elections were shamelessly manipulated
in almost every possible way. From the very beginning, Prasada was
sought to be browbeaten into not contesting. When it become clear
that the move would fail, the coterie around Sonia Gandhi controlling the
Congress pulled out all stops to ensure an overwhelming victory for her.
First, the presidents of several Pradesh Congress committees (PCCs), who
play a crucial role in preparing the list of delegates from the states
voting in the election of the Congress president, were changed. Second,
there were serious complaints that most of the Pradesh returning officers
(PROs) appointed were Sonia loyalists during the elections. Third,
the amendment to the party's constitution, made specifically at Sonia Gandhi's
instance, providing for genuine elections at every level of the party,
be it that of the bloc or that of the All-India Congress committee (AICC),
was brazenly ignored. None of the PCC delegates, who constituted
the electoral college, was elected. Each one was handpicked by the
coterie.
In Uttar Pradesh, which sends the
largest number of PCC delegates, 1200, the list of delegates was prepared
overnight by the PRO, Birender Singh, just before the last date for the
filling of nominations for the party president's post. The lists
submitted by at least 26 district returning officers (DROs) are stated
to have been ignored. That such a list would contain rather extraordinary
inclusions and exclusions is hardly surprising. Among the included
were a leader who is now with the Samajwadi Party another who is a BJP
state executive committee member, and a third who is now with the Loktantrik
Congress. Among those excluded were former governors, Mata Prasad
and Mahbir Prasad (thrice Uttar Pradesh Congress committee president),
at least two sitting MPs and several former MPs. Thus, the coterie
conferred upon Sonia Gandhi the distinction of being perhaps the only candidate
in a recent major election who chose her own electorate.
Even that apparently was not considered
enough. Everything was done to impress everyone in the party that
siding with Prasada would bring swift and severe retribution. On
October 29, Sonia Gandhi's supporters roughed up him and his supporters
inside the AICC headquarters in Delhi after he has filed his nomination
paper as candidate for the Congress president'' post. He had found
all PCC offices he visited in the state capitals during his campaign locked
or totally deserted. Delegates were told not to meet him.
The sole Congress Seva Dal functionary
in Chennai, who stood by him when he launched his election campaign there,
was stripped of his post within a couple of days of that.
On the day of the election, every
attempt was made to browbeat and overawe people into voting for Sonia Gandhi.
The police had to intervene in Lucknow, a stronghold of Prasada, and Chennai,
where two of his polling agents were so badly beaten up that they had to
be hospitalised. The provision for secret balloting for the election
of PCC members which, ironically, Gandhi herself has got written into the
party's constitution, was blatantly violated, both ballot papers and counterfoils
were numbered and the delegates were made to sign on the counterfoils,
enabling the coterie to find out who voted for whom.
The most striking instance of the
violation of the secrecy principle was provided by the chief minister of
Delhi, Sheila Dikshit, otherwise a person with poise and dignity, who publicly
displayed her ballot paper, marked in Sonia Gandhi's favour, before, depositing
it in the box, Satish Sharma and MP, also reportedly did the same thing
in the capital. It would not do to argue that they had every right
to do whatever they wanted with their ballot papers. The fact remains
that their actions violated the secrecy principle. Besides, persons
in their positions, and particularly in dikshit's, doing so puts others
under a compulsion to follow suit, particularly since a Congress MLA in
Delhi had earlier sent an open letter to all delegates from the state to
the electoral college to openly vote in Gandhi's favour.
According to reports, Ajit Jogi,
chief minister of Chhattisgarh, and Ashok Gehlot, chief minister of Rajasthan,
sat next to ballot boxes to ensure open voting in Sonia Gandhi's favour.
After voting in Tripura, which sends 67 delegates, all faction of the state
party unit announced in Agartala that their supporters had voted for Sonia
Gandhi. Clearly, what ought to have been a free and fair election,
celebrating the revival of democracy within the Congress, was turned by
the coterie into a competitive demonstration of loyalty by a hand picked
electorate. That Prasada still managed to get 94 votes must rank
as a major achievement.
Farce
Since Sonia Gandhi was bound to
win in any case, the reduction of the election to a farce can only be explained
in terms of the coterie's desperation to prove its won usefulness to her
and to crush Jitendra Prasada's challenge so conclusively as to rule out
anyone emulating his example in future. The idea was to establish
her and, through her, its absolute control over the party. Hence
the orchestration of proposals from the states like Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka,
Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana to
have her nominate their PCC chiefs Hence also the delinking of the election
of PCC chiefs and AICCs from the presidential elections. Elected
President, Gandhi would be able to have the chiefs and delegates of her
choice alone.
The manner of holding the election
also suggests that the Congress has come under a Fascist dispensation intolerant
of even the slightest dissent. Benito Mussolini would have been proud
of the coterie had he been around. The public, however, would be
wondering whether India's democracy would be safe in the hands of such
a party. After all, it was the senior Gandhi who had imposed the
emergency and the Congress had fawningly endorsed it.
