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Rift alert: Has Rahul Gandhi’s aggressive avatar irked Sonia Gandhi?

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Amid all the excitement over Rahul Gandhi’s combative comeback performance in the Lok Sabha-likened by one national newspaper to a tiger’s roar – there has not been sufficient media focus on the fact that Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka and several other party MPs, considered close to Sonia, were absent from the House when he spoke.

Sonia attended the morning session and then went home for lunch – only to return just after Rahul had finished speaking, according to The Hindustan Times – one of the few papers even to make a passing reference to her absence.
It noted that “Priyanka Vadra, frequently seen in the Speaker’s gallery when he (Rahul) makes interventions was also absent.”

The Times of India, quoting TV reports, reported that anywhere between 16 and 24 party MPs (more than half the Congress strength) chose to absent themselves just when their vice-president needed all the moral support he could get as he sought to rebuild his credentials after mysteriously going missing for eight weeks.

“It is unimaginable that a single party MP would have dared to absent themselves if Sonia was speaking,” one seasoned Congress observer said.

But what was really surprising was how disinterested Sonia herself sounded. On her own admission, she didn’t watch him on the telly. Asked what she thought of his speech, she said she didn’t hear all of it but was “told by people it was “good”.

Regular Congress watchers are hard put to recall any previous occasion when Sonia was in town but skipped a Rahul speech.

The official explanation is that on Monday she was meeting some farmers who had stayed back after attending the Congress Party’s kisan rally on Sunday.

“Party sources said Sonia could not be present in the House as she had a pre-scheduled meeting with farmers and the decision about Rahul’s intervention was taken only around 1 pm, three hours before he finally spoke,” according to a media report.

Really? Was that all to it? Missed her son’s big moment simply in order to be able to greet a few farmers – an event apparently so insignificant that her party didn’t even care to put out a press release or a photograph? Even a full day later there was not a word on the Congress party’s website about its president meeting or addressing farmers.

Not surprisingly, questions are being asked even though it is all hush-hush and nobody is willing to go on record. Was it a deliberate snub? A sign of her impatience with RG’s “to be, or not to be” existential crisis over the leadership issue?

It is no secret that, like the rest of the nation, Sonia is losing patience with the way Rahul has been dragging his feet. As party president, she is legitimately concerned that the uncertainty caused by his inability to make up his mind is compounding the crisis in the party.

There was more than a hint of her exasperation when, in response to a question about Rahul’s elevation, she snapped, “The answer will only come from him.”

Except that she didn’t roll her eyes and started tearing her hair in public, it was the response of someone who was at the end of her tether and had given up.

By not attending his speech, was she then sending out a message, a signal, that she had had enough of it?

Even assuming that Sonia might have been genuinely too busy with the farmers to take time out to return to parliament – barely five minutes’ drive from 10 Janpath – what about other high-profile party absentees? What were so many MPs doing precisely at the same time that was so important that they couldn’t be present in the House to cheer their own leader?

So, did they take their cue from her?

After all, Sonia is known to run a tight ship and it is inconceivable that so many MPs would have suddenly decided virtually to boycott their leader’s make-or-break speech if they knew they would risk “Madam’s” displeasure.

To be fair, nobody has accused her of orchestrating the mass “boycott”. But as one conspiracy theorist put it, “good loyalists are able intuitively to divine their leader’s mind.”

The fact that the absentee MPs are not known to have been ticked off appears to lend weight to the view that there is more to it than meets the eye. Conspiracy theories apart, it is intriguing that party MPs were not “whipped” (that is, not instructed by party whips to be present in the House during Rahul’s intervention). Forget conspiracy theories, what does it say about Congress discipline that nearly half its MPs are allowed to disappear when their star leader is due to speak?

It is well-known that there is a deep “generational” rift in the party, and the mother and the son are not on the same page on several issues. The most critical of these is the pace of transition of leadership from the “Old Guard” to the so-called “Young Turks” represented by Rahul.
Rahul has made no attempt to hide his distrust – often contempt – for the Old Guard, and the latter (barring exceptions notably people like Digvijaya Singh who support Rahul) have pulled no punches in returning the compliment.

In recent weeks, several high-profile leaders, representing the “Old Guard”, have gone public saying that they would like Sonia to continue as party president in the face of growing clamour from Rahul’s supporters that he should take over.

In fact, Sonia’s supporters have gone a step further than simply voicing their backing for her. They have explicitly opposed a leadership change at this crucial juncture arguing that Rahul is not sufficiently mature and experienced to handle the crisis.

The question many are asking is: would they have made such overtly partisan statements without her implicit backing? In other words, there are now two distinct camps in the party, one led by the mother and the other by the son. And what happened in the Lok Sabha on Monday was consistent with a deepening rift between these two camps. Don’t blame the poor farmers. They just got caught up in the intra-dynasty feud.

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