Congress strategises against Patil detractors

The Congress is likely to launch an aggressive campaign from July 2 to clear misgivings about the party's presidential nominee, Pratibha Patil, accused by the BJP of financial irregularities.

Party sources said Patil would herself reply to the allegations. Congress leader Devender Dwivedi admitted that the "daily rumour-mongering and character assassination of the presidential candidate was worrying us.'

The Congress campaign would focus on Patil's "illustrious" career between 1966 and 1994 and her dignified conduct as governor thereafter. Not a single allegation has been made against her during her entire political career, the Congress is likely to argue.

The party would also highlight her involvement in running schools for special children and women's cooperatives in Maharashtra. It would attack the BJP as an "anti-women'' outfit that had "launched similar smear campaigns against Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi."

Congress sources said a part of Patil's defence would be her achievement of entering politics at the age of 27 and the fact that she was elected to the Maharashtra Assembly a number of times without being the target of any character assassination.

They said failed banks and defunct sugar mills were associated with every successful politician in Maharashtra, which for several decades followed a policy of rewarding entrepreneurship through cooperative ventures via bank loans, subsidies and help in setting up cooperative sugar mills.

It was another matter that later, as competition became intense, most cooperative banks and mills collapsed, including those owned by Patil and her family.

"As a Maharashtra politician, it was not possible to enter politics unless you had a cooperative venture. It was a way of creating capital for business," said a party source, adding it was another matter that now, Maharashtra had "more than 100 sick cooperative sugar mills which need an infusion of Rs 2500 crore for revival."

The party would stress the fact that by setting up a bank for women, Patil stepped in an arena dominated by men. "If this is not entrepreneurship, what is?" the source asked.