If you can’t get to Madam, you can look up Mr Eyes & Ears Patel

Patel’s strength, according to most Congressmen, lies in the fact that Sonia Gandhi “trusts him completely”. And she does that because, “he has no agenda of his own, does not indulge in politicking, and carries out her directions with quiet efficiency,” said a Congress worker who has watched Patel grow in the organisation, from his days as a student leader in the NSUI and the Youth Congress.

Till last year, Patel was one of Sonia Gandhi’s two political secretaries, but far more in the background than Ambika Soni. Soni was regarded as Sonia Gandhi’s “closest confidante” and accused—by her detractors in rival camps—of being the “queen of a coterie.”

Although Patel was off and on named as part of the “10 Janpath clique”, he never evoked either the awe or resentment that Soni did. Soni continues to be close to 10 Janpath, but since she is no longer the Congress president’s political secretary, her clout—at least in the average partyman’s eyes—has diminished.

Patel may derive his current No 1 status from being Sonia’s pointman in the party but his success also stems from his personality and grip on organisational matters.

In a party where every leader runs down his or her colleagues, Patel enjoys a rare popularity. Proof of this was evident at the AICC plenary session held in Kolkata in 1997 when Patel got the highest number of votes in the CWC election. That election result—when Sitaram Kesri was president—also showed that Patel’s acceptability in the party was not derived solely from his closeness to first Rajiv Gandhi and now Sonia.

It was Rajiv Gandhi who first spotted Patel’s potential and made him one of his parliamentary secretaries. Oscar Fernandes, another parliamentary secretary who stuck to the organisation, has just made a shift to government, leaving Patel with the status of the party’s real “organisation man”.

After Sonia Gandhi declined the post of prime minister, it has become a bit of a fashion statement for Congressmen to say they would rather be in the organisation than in government. But in Patel’s case, the claim is for real. He has never been a minister. And unlike Ambika Soni, who declined the offer of ministership, or Oscar Fernandes, who accepted it, Patel was made no such offer because he was far more crucial to the party.

But as his clout grows, stray voices against him are also emerging. One Congress leader, commenting on his “self-effacing humility”, also said, “he is one man who agrees with everything you say and then does exactly what he wants.” Another charge is that has pushed his own men in key posts in the government and may do the same when the resuffle in the AICC set-up takes place.

But the chorus in favour of “Ahmadbhai”—that he shuns publicity and TV studio punditry, that he knows party cadres by name, that he does not play favourites, that he is never brusque or self-important—drowns out these voices, at least for now. How long that will last in the party’s ever-shifting power equations, though, is an open question.