The rebel CWC members cited Rao's promise at a CWC meeting last June to call an AICC session and said urgent political issues needed to be discussed. They have been working on the letter for some weeks and evidently decided earlier this week that the time was ripe to send it to him.
Some senior Congress MPs pointed out that requisitioning an AICC meet was not easy since the previous AICC's term had lapsed and the process to elect a fresh one was underway. Rao could easily declare that some of the signatories to the requisition were not in the party any more, that they had joined the Tiwari Congress, one of them said.
One reason the rebels have decided to gamble on an open attack at this juncture is the recent appointment of R K Dhawan to manage organisational polls. The rebels expect that Dhawan will be able to rig the elections in Rao's favour.
Rao did not seem unduly fazed yesterday, and stuck to a scheduled off-the-record meeting with a group of journalists and seemed relaxed. Most Congress leaders were shocked at the way the law was taking its course, though, and speculation was rife about whether Rao and some of his party colleagues, who are alleged to have bribed the four, would be arrested next.
One of Rao's close associates held that, even if the arrested four were to name Congress leaders during interrogation over the next few days, courts would need more evidence than just their statements, and this the CBI did not have.
Rao is said to have told CBI officers who questioned him over the past two days that he had bribed no one. He held that not just these four
