Congress president Sitaram Kesari yesterday further marginalised other power centres within the party, particularly Sharad Pawar and P V Narasimha Rao. He told reporters that all power to decide for the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) was vested in him as its leader and not shared by Pawar who is the partys leader in the Lok Sabha.
Kesari also ordered readmission of Vilas Rao Deshmukh, one of Pawars most vocal opponents, to the partys Maharashtra unit.
Kesari has been upset with the attempt by Pawar supporters to project him as a candidate for the Prime Ministers post.
During the day, Kesari also signalled Raos complete marginalisation by not his predecessor to attend the Congress Working Committee meeting to decide the partys candidates for the Punjab assembly elections.
But, he included some of those who used to be pillars of support for Rao until Kesari ordered him to resign as the CPP leader. Pranab Mukherjee, Santosh Mohan Deb and G Venkatswamy were special invitees at the meeting. Mukherjee and Deb are evidently to continue as the partys chief whips in the two Houses of Parliament.
Kesari has been eager to consolidate his hold over the party by accommodating as many as possible of its senior leaders as he can in positions of importance.
Since the CWC was functioning yesterday as the partys Central Election Committee (CEC), it made all those attending the meeting centres of power in the party. Ticket-seekers at every level queue up outside the doors of those involved in the final decision on distributing party tickets.
The only other special invitees at the meeting were the Chief Ministers of Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, apart from the Chief Minister and pradesh Congress committee president of Punjab.
Mukherjee, Venkatswamy and Deb had all switched their loyalty to Kesari on the eve of his election by general acclamation as the CPP leader. Venkatswamy publicly announced that the large majority of the party MPs from Andhra, which is also the state from which Rao hails, wanted Kesari to take over. He was then asked to chair the crucial CPP meeting.
The support of these three to Kesari was crucial, since he had faced a difficult time getting Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot to withdraw from the contest and allow him to be elected by consensus.
Only two dozen of Raos supporters remained with him to the end, when Pilot allowed the consensus election after making a hard-hitting speech about the need for democracy in the party.
Pawar fell in line, obviously having been assured that he would be appointed the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha. Kesari is a member of the Rajya Sabha and would have had to appoint another leader for the partys contingent in the Lok Sabha.
Virtually the only senior leader who was close to Rao and remains outside the pale of power within the party now is former home minister S B Chavan. It is difficult for Kesari to give him a position of the sort of importance he would expect, since he is Sharad Pawars arch-rival and keeping Pawar as an ally is more important to Kesari. Plus, he has retained two of Chavans most important potential allies, Sudhakarrao Naik and V N Gadgil, in their All-India Congress Committee jobs.
