Sonia comments leave allies unimpressed

Congress President Sonia Gandhi's fire and brimstone address at the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) on the conduct of the allies has left them unimpressed. Most allies dismissed the remarks as not applying to them.

The CPI(M) said the Congress was known for its "record of flip-flops on the coalition issue".

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) general secretary D P Tripathi said, "I welcome Congress President Sonia Gandhi's speech, especially the part in which she spoke about the coalition dharma".

CPI's D Raja wanted the Congress to realise that the party's talk that it would not leave its political space for ever "applied to others also" and suggested that other parties would also act likewise.

For many in the Congress, Gandhi's address brought back memories of the Pachmarhi session of the Congress which had debated the pros and cons of a coalition. At the day-long AICC session yesterday, Gandhi had set the tone by saying that coalition did not mean the party should lose its political space for ever and had declared that it should revive the days of its glorious past. For several in the United Progressive Alliance, this struck a note of warning, and the assertion of the Congress's latent tendency "" of wanting to turn a coalition into a Congress-centric formation.

Rashtriya Janata Dal vice president Ram Dev Bhandari, whose party is the second largest constituent of the UPA, played down the implications of the resolution passed by AICC which said a coalition could not be at the cost of the revival of the Congress itself, particularly in states where its base had been eroded. Bhandari dismissed the resolution as an effort by the leadership to play to party gallery and advised that the resolution be seen in perspective.

The Left parties as also the RJD and NCP reminded the Congress that it should understand that the country was passing through a coalition era. CPI(M)'s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Mohammad Salim said the Congress needed to "reinvent itself" in this era of coalition.

Noting that the Congress has a record of flip-flops on the issue of coalition since the Pachmarhi meeting in 1998, he regretted that "Indian politics has entered into an era of coalition but our leaders have not".

CPI's Raja said the Congress should remember that if any party tried to go beyond the limited mandate of a coalition then "there will be a problem". He lamented that the day-long meeting did not focus much attention on the problems of the "aam admi" (common man) . Nor was there a discussion on the spate of suicides by farmers. He also said that there was no sharp ideological debate as in the past AICC sessions on issues like the public sector.

The Congress' new line on coalition has come four years after the Shimla brainstorming session of senior leaders of the party which called for coming together of secular forces.

The Shimla resolve had helped the Congress come to power at the Centre in the May 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

In her speech, Gandhi had also said that the party in Uttar Pradesh needed to be built from the ground level, while it faced its most difficult challenges in the states of Bihar, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Incidentally, all these states are either ruled by Congress allies or are dominated by them in the Lok Sabha.