Divide and rule

The fact that the Gandhi family's writ runs large in the Congress is well known. Less known is the fact that the party operates through power cliques divided into Sonia and Rahul loyalist camps with little interaction between the two. This was apparent on the day the Uttar Pradesh Assembly results trickled in. Even as the All India Congress Committee official in charge of the media and Sonia loyalist Janardhan Dwivedi tried to tackle the queries of persistent journalists on the party's poor performance, he was completely unaware of Rahul Gandhi’s decision to address the media. He found out through the media — that too, only when television channels flashed it as “breaking news.”