Congress on poll alert

NUCLEAR DEAL STANDOFF

The Congress leadership is not ruling out the possibility of mid-term polls entirely and has started gearing up for such an eventuality.

The party high command has decided to appraise its MPs, MLAs and the state office-bearers on why the nuclear deal is important for the country.

"Though we reached truce on Thursday, it seems to be a fragile one. Just one off-the-cuff statement from either side is sufficient to start the whole crisis again. That is why the high command has decided to make the party's important functionaries literate about the whole nuclear deal issue, otherwise we may not able to take on the challenge thrown to us by the Left and BJP," said a Union minister belonging to Congress from Maharashtra.

The party is particularly worried about the likes of Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh who might try to give the deal a spin and try to project India's growing relationship with the US under the UPA government as anti-Muslim policy of this government, the minister admitted.

"The party high command is in the process of identifying the leaders from each state who can understand the deal themselves and then communicate it to the district-level office-bearers in their own language. The exercise of apprising the party's second rung leaders about the deal might begin soon after the monsoon session of Parliament is over," he said.

As part of the exercise, a three-page note in English and Hindi was sent to the party's MPs recently.