Sonia to walk the tightrope in choosing nominee for PCC chief

Nearly all the PCCs, barring UP and Tamil Nadu, have already authorised Sonia to nominate their chiefs but this has apparently only added to her troubles since this has led to rival factions making a beeline for Delhi for an audience with the party chief and other senior leaders.

Ironically, the very purpose of delinking the PCC elections from that of the party president’s and getting the PCCs to authorise Sonia to nominate her candidate to head the state unit was to prevent dissidence factional fighting from raising its ugly head.

Rival factions of the Tamil Nadu, Orissa and Assam state units are already in Delhi to lobby for their cause. In Tamil Nadu, senior state leaders K. Thangkabalu and T. Ramamurthy have ganged up against incumbent PCC chief E.V.K.S. Elangovan, a Sonia nominee, while in Orissa, tribals led by former chief minister Hemananda Biswal have renewed their concerted campaign to oust reigning state unit chief J.B. Patnaik.

The Bihar PCC has neatly divided into two factions, one led by PCC chief Chadan Bagchi and the other by senior state leader Ram Jatan Sinha. Both factions have passed separate resolutions authorising Sonia to nominate the new PCC chief but that obviously doesn’t solve her problems. In Haryana, the knives are out again between PCC chief B.S. Hooda and former chief minister Bhajan Lal, with the latter aiming to displace his old rival, and in Chhattisgarh, veteran leader V.C. Shukla’s supporters want their man as the PCC chief now that Ajit Jogi is Chief Minister.

Maharasthra is witnessing a full-fledged war between Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and PCC chief Govindrao Adik while in UP, rebel leader Jitendra Prasada’s candidate and party MP from Jhansi, S.S. Bundela, has already called for an election for the PCC chief’s post.

Although PCC elections didn’t take place in Assam, the situation in the state, which goes to polls next year, is no better. Former chief minister Hiteswar Saikia’s widow Hemaprabha, has come out in the open against PCC chief Tarun Gagoi and even threatened to quit the party along with her supporters.

While the names of nearly all the PCC chiefs are likely to finalised over the weekend, Sonia will have to walk the tightrope in choosing her nominee from the long list of aspirants in these faction-ridden states. In fact, by eventually preferring one over the other, she may just land up triggering more dissidence than curbing it, a development which the Prasada camp is eagerly awaiting to exploit. In retrospect, feel party circles, it would have been better for her to stick to the party constitution by getting every state unit to elect its own chief.