Leadership still a question:SP

Prime ministership issue will be decided by people: Sonia

Squabbles started in the Opposition even before an anti-communal front against the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) showed up on the horizon, with the Congress claiming the right to decide its leader, and by definition, the leader of the coalition, and the Samajwadi Party (SP) saying the issues must be left to the alliance to decide.

Addressing a rally and later reporters in Mumbai, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi said it was for the people of India to decide who their Prime Minister should be.

However, the leadership of the Congress would be decided by the Congress, and it was Congress that would invite other parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party to join the alliance, she said.

This formulation was questioned by both the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party. The BSP said it considered the Congress support to the Samajwadi Party, a betrayal of secularism because the Samajwadi Party had not concealed its affection for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"The fact that the Congress is party to supporting the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh where a BJP Speaker is being kept on by the UP government, shows the Samajwadi Party's real leanings," BSP leader Rashid Alvi said.

Until Gandhi can resolve these internal contradictions, it is unlikely that the Congress bid to take an early lead in uniting the Opposition is going to bear fruit.

It is not just the anti-pathy of those parties that are yet to become part of the alliance, like the BSP and the Samajwadi Party that should worry the Congress. Existing allies like the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are also upset at the treatment they receive at the hands of the Congress.

"Let me tell you frankly, if the Congress loses an election, no tears are shed by us. The way they talk to us with their noses in the air, the way they discuss issues, it is as if we do not exist. There are times when we seriously resent the loss of dignity we are subjected to because we are allies of the Congress," said a prominent Nationalist Congress Party leader and Rajya Sabha member.

Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh made it clear that the party won seven Assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh because the Congress thought it could not win even one and the party took that up as a challenge.

In the process its area of influence that was earlier confined to the Bundelkhand region bordering Uttar Pradesh, extended itself elsewhere and caused considerable damage to the poll prospects of Congress nominees in many areas.

However, there is one element in the Congress strategy that is interesting.

The fact that Gandhi is talking in terms of an anti-communal alliance to defeat the BJP, in itself means the Congress is going to take up Gujarat, rewriting history books and all the other assorted charges of communalism levelled against the BJP, as the cementing force for the Opposition.

Poverty, lack of development and increasing inequity in society are issues that appear to be put on the back burner.

The Prime Minister by contrast has said development rather than Hindutva would be the National Democratic Alliance's campaign point.

This means that communalism will get intensified in the campaign leading to an unexpected political twist in the weeks ahead""because if the Congress speaks of communalism, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad will not be far behind in criticising it.

As a strategy of mobilisation, therefore, communalism could become a dangerous slogan in the days to come.