NEW DELHI, NOV 24: Sonia Gandhi's plans to woo back Congressmen who have left the party in the last five years proved a nonstarter with Tamil Maanila Congress leader G.K. Moopanar, a former Sonia loyalist, turning down the offer today.Moopanar met Sonia for the second successive day in her office in Parliament House today, setting off speculation about a possible merger of the TMC in the Congress. Sonia is believed to have tried hard to persuade Moopanar to return to the Congress fold, offering him any position in the party he wanted. Moopanar was accompanied by TMC MP Jayanthi Natarajan.Moopanar is an old 10, Janpath loyalist and it was this loyalty to the Gandhi family which robbed him of prime ministership in April 1997 after H.D. Deve Gowda was dethroned by Sitaram Kesri.Since Sonia Gandhi's election as Congress President earlier this month, the party High Command has been busy mapping out a strategy to revive the party. One of the ways was to re-establish links with groups which have parted company with the Congress in recent years, like the TMC, Trinamool Congress and the NCP, or at any rate a section of it, and explore the idea of a federated structure with parties either returning to the Congress fold or forming some kind of a loose alliance with it.Moopanar told The Indian Express in his inimitable style shortly after the meeting,``If my re-entering the Congress could help the party to win elections in Tamil Nadu, I would return. But as you know, I am running a separate party.''During his meeting with Sonia, he is believed to have argued against the TMC's merger with the Congress on grounds that it would weaken his bargaining power with Jayalalitha in the forthcoming polls to the Tamil Nadu Assembly. A one-time bitter foe of Jayalalitha, Moopanar has in recent months mended fences with the AIDMK chief. However, he is yet to sew up an alliance with her and it is not going to be easy either with the AIADMK chief expressing unwillingness to share power with allies if her party were to come to power. But its early days yet and TMC leaders appraise Jayalalitha's stance as nothing more than playing to the gallery. The Congress already has an alliance with the AIADMK.The Congress-TMC alliance in Tamil Nadu, though a near certainty, is not a winning combination and the Congress leadership knows this. The Congress' hopes of roping in Mamata in an alliance in West Bengal are also receding. Though Mamata is not happy with the partial rollback of prices of kerosene and the LPG, she is expected to play safe, and stick to the NDA. But the Congress is not giving up hope and feels that if elections are held in April 2001, after presentation of the Union Budget, Mamata will be under greater pressure to quit as the Budget is expected to contain hard measures. For this reason, the BJP would prefer February for polls to the six Assemblies, but the Election Commission has to decide its timing in consultation with the concerned state governments. The terms of the state Assemblies in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Pondicherry and Assam, where polls are due, all come to an end between mid May and mid June next year.
