Without waiting for the government to formally announce the dates for Lok Sabha elections, an upbeat Congress has decided to get into poll gear at once with Sonia Gandhi starting her first ‘‘roadshow’’ in Uttar Pradesh this weekend.Sonia will travel through western UP from January 10 to 12, it was announced today — kicking off a nationwide campaign that will showcase her ‘‘energy and dynamism’’ in the run-up to polls. But more than Sonia’s travels, it is her decision to play a pro-active role in building alliances that seems to have injected new life into the party.While Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh and Jaipal Reddy sought to puncture the ‘‘hype’’ surrouding the so-called ‘‘feelgood’’ factor in the Indian economy today, the party itself made no bones about feeling good with the past few days’ developments. These include ‘‘clinching’’ an alliance with the DMK in Tamil Nadu that was announced by Sonia’s emissary Manmohan Singh in Chennai today, and the NCP’s Maharashtra unit advocating a pre-poll pact with the Congress and rejecting overtures to join the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. Rather than brooding over the party’s dismal showing in Assembly elections, Congressmen now claim the drubbing they received was ‘‘the best thing that could have happened to the party’’.The defeats not only shook the complacency but also pushed the Congress chief to make the first moves in building a ‘‘secular’’ alliance. Despite favouring alliances ‘‘in principle’’ at the Shimla Conclave last July, no moves were made to that end till the last week of December.Since then, Sonia has moved into alliance gear and not taken her foot off the accelerator, party leaders said. Partymen point out that Sonia, who took the initiative at every stage, is convinced the party can hope for power only by learning the art of making friends and forming alliances. Apart from UP, she is going to take more initiatives to sew up pre-poll tie-ups in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu and revive the Congress profile through a series of roadshows across the ‘‘real India’’, sources said.
