Pawar rebuffs Cong on Sonia's origin

Rejecting the Congress ultimatum to his party not to rake up the issue of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar today said the issue would be raised during the forthcoming Assembly polls and curtly told the Congress it was free to take any decision including snapping ties in Maharashtra as threatened.

"The Congress is free to take any decision including snapping of ties in Maharashtra. There is no change in NCP's stand on Sonia's foreign origin," said Pawar, whose party is an alliance partner in Congress-led Democratic Front government in Maharashtra.

In a clear rebuff to Congress Maharashtra unit chief Ranjit Deshmukh, Pawar said the Congress leadership in Delhi had not said anything about the ultimatum.

He said the Congress could take any decision but there was no question of giving up the issue or diluting his party's stand on the issue.

"We had to leave the party and form the NCP because we dared to raise the issue of Sonia's foreign origin issue," Pawar said "Jab tak woh sarkar chalana hai (in Maharashtra) tab tak chalaenge. Agar nahi chalana hai to nahi hi sahi" (As long as they want to run the DF government, we will run it. If they do not want to run it, we have no problems), the NCP chief said.

Pawar, whose NCP has been sharing power with the Congress since 1999, said, "We sincerely feel that our country with a population of 100 crore has enough competent leaders who can rule the country and we do not need any foreign leader to manage its the affairs."

He was speaking on the sidelines of a function to inaugurate a hospital and an educational institution of the Manikchand Group of Industries, in Shirur about 60 kms from Pune.

In Delhi, the NCP said it had its own agenda and was not "bonded labour" simply because it had an alliance with the Congress.

"The NCP is an independent political party and we are not bound to go by whatever the Congress says. We also have our own views and our own way of reacting to issues," said Praful Patel, NCP spokesperson.

Yesterday, Jaipal Reddy charged Pawar with seeking to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. Pawar made several derogatory references to Sonia's foreign origins at a rally in New Delhi. He has also declared that the NCP would set up candidates all over Chhattisgarh to defeat Congress Chief Minister Ajit Jogi.

Reddy's contention was that everything the NCP was doing was undermining the Congress, although the NCP was in power in a state solely because of the Congress.

He had referred to Pawar's acceptance of the vice-chairmanship of the National Disaster Management Authority, a job that has the rank of a Cabinet minister, and said the NCP hardly ever joined the rest of the Opposition in taking up issues that were critical of the BJP-led NDA government.

"Sharad Pawar deliberately refrained from making any comment on the Tehelka expose and boycott of George Fernandes," Reddy alleged.

Yesterday, the Congress gave a seven-day ultimatum to the NCP chief to reconsider his stand or face dire consequences. Today Patel said such notices were "childish".

This was in response to Maharashtra Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde's statement that Pawar should desist from criticising the Congress leadership while he was in a coalition.

The NCP has already proved that if it becomes active, it can do serious damage to the electoral prospects of the Congress.

Because of the NCP, the Congress suffered serious defeats by large margins in between 16 and 20 seats in the Gujarat Assembly elections.

It is the Congress's poor performance that put the Narendra Modi government in power in Gujarat.

The current spat with the NCP is also a result of the humiliating defeat that the Congress suffered in the Solapur Lok Sabha by-election for which the NCP was seen as solely responsible.

However, immediately after the by-election, the Congress sought to make light of Pawar's personal role in the matter, by saying that he had himself done everything, including expelling some NCP leaders from the region for working against the Congress-NCP alliance candidate.

But an attack on Gandhi's foreign origins is not something the Congress can stomach mainly because of the domino effect it could have, leading to serious political destabilisation of the Congress.

Significantly, a day after Reddy's condemnation of Pawar's remarks, there was no organised campaign from Congress leaders in the party's headquarters criticising Pawar, indicating the party was quick to strike but afraid to wound.