Congmen make a beeline for Sonia

Kharge and H K Patil, former Union Minister Jaffer Sharief, Basavaraj Patil Anvari, M V Chandrashekharamurthy were huddled in a room of Raj Bhavan along with junior leaders before Sonia could condescend to come out of her room to give a dharmadharshan to her subjects.

As all she wanted to say was just a smile with folded hands and an occassional `let me see’ everytime some junior leaders pleaded her `to save the country by taking over Congress leadership’. The silence made the leaders feel sheepish as they had tried every trick in the trade to get a dharshan.

As there was no official photographer to record the `historic’ meeting, desperate appeals were made to newspaper photographers to click their cameras as there was no scope for extending the dialogue with their leader.

Outside, if gaudy and unaesthetic posters and hoarding were any yardstick to grab her attention, then several aspirants have made their mark.

Former minister Naseer Ahmed had arranged for school children to wear T shirts with a message, `The Only Hope’ and carried the photographs of Sonia and her chidren, Rahul and Priyanka who was seen in her school uniform.

Bang in front of Raj Bhavan there was a hoarding in the style of the one that normally adorns outsides of a marriage choultries, with names like, “Nagarjuna weds Seethadevi” with marigold flowers forming the letters. But this hoarding only welcomed Sonia with the names of R V Devraj, H D Gangaraj and M Satyanarayana prominently displayed. A similar one against the walls of All India Radio, carried the message, `Take on the mantle of leadership, save the oppressed from the hardship’.

Other posters looked like the posters of old Italian western films. There were several ones welcoming Sonia by a person who claimed himself as `social and environmental crusader’. Another prominently displayed poster said: May her arrival bring new inspiration’. One more hoarding said that “let their sacrifice, Not in vain” with dumb caricatures of Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi looking even more dumbfounded.

An official said that all sorts of leaders, even some with criminal records to their credit, have managed to adorn the walls of the City, defacing the city, thanks to Sonia’s visit to the City to inaugurate a seminar on disabled.

Sources in the secretariat said that this crude exhibition of sychophancy was possible only because the hands of the Election Commission was tied, as it was made to pass an order, first time in its history, that there will be no code of conduct for the elections to Legislative Council from elected bodies on the argument that it was an indirect election.