ORCHESTRATING A CWC

When the “Letter Bomb”, as it’s known, was handed to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the Gandhis moved into damage control mode. The Working Committee seemed the best platform to take on the letter writers, as only four of the 23 rebels are CWC members. Accordingly, “loyalists” were given the go ahead to profess their loyalty to the Gandhis on social media, the BJP collusion was hinted at, and Sonia Gandhi’s plan to resign was leaked. Having whipped the right emotional overtones, the meeting became all about professing loyalty to the family, while the real issues raised in the letter were sidelined. The choice of speakers is interesting: A.K. Antony, whose loyalty to Sonia Gandhi cannot be questioned, but his allegiance to Camp Rahul is yet to be ascertained, considering his bête-noir from the state, K.C. Venugopal is emerging as one of Rahul’s key aides; Dr Manmohan Singh, whose UPA government still was recently attacked by Team Rahul as well as Ambika Soni who is known to be close to both Ghulam Nabi Azad and Manish Tewari. Also, it is well known that the minutes of the meeting were leaked to the media while it was going on. Was this leak authorised? Some believe so and blame the person tasked with this job for creating the confusion over Rahul’s comments, where he was misquoted of accusing the letter writers of colluding with the BJP. And finally came the CWC resolution which asked Sonia to continue as the interim president and gave no time frame as to when the AICC session to elect the next president would be convened. Will there be an election to the post of the party chief or will Rahul be nominated once again? And when will this take place? So in the end, after seven long hours of competing with the Sushant Singh Rajput case for TRPS, the Congress is back to status quo. More or less, with 23 members give and take. However sources claim that Rahul has reached out to the letter writers and assured them of an election to the post of party chief. Will one of them contest the polls, given Shashi Tharoor’s recent let’s-move-on tweet?