Author: S Gurumurthy
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: April 10, 2006
How after physically throwing out the reigning
Congress president Sitaram Kesari from the AICC office, Sonia took over as
the president of the Congress party in the year 1997 was live-televised all
over the world. Again, when the first Vajpayee government fell in 1988 thanks
to Jayalalithaa, she had openly worked to become the Prime Minister of the
country. She even claimed, of coarse falsely, before the national and international
media that she had the support of 272 MPs. Again in 2004, she produced to
the President the letter signed by 360-odd MPs from all parties, including
herself, proposing her as the Prime Minister.
All this happened before the national and
global public watching television. But when, suddenly, she abandoned her efforts,
for reasons which only President Abdul Kalam and she could tell, the media
and the public forgot the Kesari ouster, her famous 272 claim and her efforts
to become the Prime Minister till the previous day and accepted her claim
to sainthood at face value. She was sainted leaving all others in Indian politics
as ordinaries.
But this time around her claim to renounce
the Lok Sabha seat and the National Advisory Council chair as yet another
testimony of her saintliness did not cut ice. Every one of consequence knew
that she had shut down the Parliament to get a law enacted save for her the
position which she renounced after being caught red-handed in the blatant
attempt to self-exculpate. In effect, she was seen to resign from her position
as member of the Lok Sabha which she was sure to lose by legal disqualification
- that is her resignation was seen as a desperate attempt to escape a sure
dismissal.
Moreover, knowledgeable ones were seeing the
naked truth that she was resigning from the Lok Sabha not to go home and look
after her grand child, but, only to re-enter it. So, she resigned as chairperson
of the NAC only to qualify to contest again from the Rae Bareilly Lok Sabha
constituency. Had she not resigned she would be disqualified again if she
were elected. So she merely gave up the positions she was sure to lose by
law and again to gain back the position she had renounced! Yet she unabashedly
claimed and her party shamelessly sang these resignations as her second renunciation.
But the story of her resignations did not
stop with her seat in Lok Sabha and the chair in NAC. In the next three weeks
she sent in more and other resignations. She quietly resigned as the chairperson
of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. She silently sent in her resignations also
as the chairperson of the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust, of the Jawaharlal
Memorial, of the Swaraj Bhavan Trust and of the Indian Council for Child Welfare.
She also gave up, again silently, her position as the president of the Kamala
Nehru Memorial and as the patron of the Nehru Trust for Cambridge University
and Round Square (International Grammar Schools UK). She also gave up her
position as the chairperson of the Jallian Wallabagh Memorial Trust. She gave
up her membership of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library too.
Far from boasting these resignations also
as 'sacrifices' the effort was to conceal the very fact and act of these other
resignations. That she resigned from these positions was found out by strenuous
investigation by the media. Why? Each one of these positions was a state favour
to her which could disqualify her in her effort to get back what she had renounced,
namely, the membership of the Lok Sabha again. Even she would not claim these
resignations to be sacrifices. or, she got rid of those positions only to
escape disqualification to get elected to the Lok Sabha again. So wisely she
did not claim these other re signations as sacrifices. But her resignation
from the chair of the NAC was no different from these. That was as much an
effort to get around the constitutional disqualification that will attach
to her if she got elected again from Rae Bareilly as the subsequent resignations
in silence.
The subsequent resignations were concealed
for two reasons. One, they would betray the real character of the earlier
renunciations. Two, that she held so many positions would become publicly
known and dent her image as not an officeseeker. In the end the story proves
to be simpler than how it started. Her resignation from Lok Sabha attempted
to be sold as her second renunciation was just an act of giving up what she
had already lost, being disqualified to continue to be in the Lok Sabha.
Her silent resignations later were part of
her efforts to overcome the disqualification to gain back what she had renounced,
that is to get elected to the Lok Sabha from Rae Bareilly again. In short
she sacrificed her tainted membership of the Lok Sabha to get it back after
removing the taint through forced 'sacrifices?'. The later resignations in
deafening silence only prove that the earlier ones were no different.
