Dhule show makes Sonia a star, alters script

For, its been long time since the Congress could manage to put up such a big show and this has not only impressed but also dismayed the rivals. It has also called a temporary halt to factionalism in the State Congress, a la Sonia’s endorsement of Sharad Pawar.

Pawar and the State Congress have for some time now been smarting under the ridicule of their political rivals at their `incapacity’ to draw crowds.

“They are afraid to hold meetings on large maidans like I do,” a scornful Sena supremo Bal Thackeray recently said. “They find it easier to pack small halls with party workers.”

Moreover, the party’s promised morcha of five lakh at Nagpur during the winter session of the State legislature in December last year fell rather flat when only around one lakh turned up. Chief Minister Manohar Joshi led others in poking fun at the Congress. “They claimed five lakhs and could not get even 50,000,” he had said.

There could have been at least six times that number, had it not been for the conspiracy of the Sena and Sharad Joshi’s Shetkari Sangathana, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee President Ranjit Deshmukh had claimed. The Sangathana, he said, under the guise of protesting the destruction of crops by unseasonal rains, set up road blocks on all the highways leading to Nagpur to prevent farmers and other Congress supporters from reaching the winter capital on time.

So, Congress workers were fearing the worst as their trucks, carrying adivasis and farmers to Sonia’s rally on Friday, werechallaned all along the route by the Road Transport Authorities. “They were stopped miles away from Nandurbar,” Chandrakant Raghuvanshi, the Congress’ crowd-moibliser-in-chief told The Indian Express, alleging there was another conspiracy afoot to defeat Sonia’s rally.

“But we were glad to see that despite the discomfort, the eager people walked those remaining miles to Nandurbar and spilled out of the limited space made available to us.”

Even with regard to the grounds, he said the police authorities played hot and cold with the Congress. “They refused to grant us permission to hold the rally on a bigger ground. The permission came the night before when it was too late to erect the podium. So we had to stick to the smaller ground,” he said.

Under the circumstances, it was understandable why Pawar could not stop grinning, despite the fact that the show went unattended by many Nehru-Gandhi family loyalists like former Union Home Minister S B Chavan and former Chief Minister Sudhakarrao Naik.But their determination to stay away from Sonia’s first ever visit to Maharashtra might have helped Pawar rather than mar his efforts to build bridges with the second Mrs Gandhi, who is said not to trust him too far.

Her appreciation of the fact that Nandurbar fetched her her biggest crowds yet, is now being seen as a feather in Pawar’s cap and proof of the fact that factional politics in the State Congress is not paying off at least vis-a-vis Sonia Gandhi. Moreover, the reactions from the common voters too are beginning to turn favourable.

Understandably then, Pawar, who earlier put her impact on Congress fortunes at ten per cent — as against Chavan’s two per cent — now seems to believe she could help Congress take major strides in this election and is confident his party will overtake the Sena-BJP in the State. Post-Nandurbar, however, the State Congress is genuinely worried. So is the Sena-BJP, though for exactly the opposite reason. Congressmen hope that the crowds they mobilise for Sonia in both Nagpur’s Kasturchand Park and Mumbai’s Shivaji Park match the Nandurbar numbers. Anything less, they reckon, would leave them with much egg on their face. And if they do pull it off, the face would be Sena-BJP’s.