The Hindu : Sonia's day out in Parliament

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 19, 2003

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Sonia's day out in Parliament

By Harish Khare

The Leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi, participating in the debate on the no-confidence motion in Parliament on Monday. — PTI (TV image)

New Delhi Aug. 18. It was a performance for which the entire Congress was waiting, with its collective breath delicately bated. Not surprising, the entire senior leadership was there to watch the leader open the debate on the no-confidence motion. All the cheer-leaders were there in the Rajya Sabha gallery: Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ambika Soni, Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Suresh Pachouri and others.

It was as if somehow the party wanted to see for itself whether Sonia Gandhi could hold centrestage, as if she was on some kind of personal test. And it was indeed a personal show.

The suspicion was confirmed by the presence of Priyanka Vadhra who sat in the visitors' gallery exactly across from her mother.

It was very much a personal and personalised show, out to prove to critics and admirers alike that her apprenticeship was over and she was ready to take charge of the party's parliamentary columns. The NDA benches, too, were cognisant of the occasion's importance for Ms. Gandhi.

In fact, the ruling coalition benches had a game plan. Disrupt her, trip her, throw her out of gear. Do not allow her message of indictment to sink in. Every time she would make a forceful point, the back-benches heckled.

The senior Ministers adorned the front benches, wearing that sniggering look of a veteran watching a novice enter the arena. Jaswant Singh wore a bemused look; but the bemusement gave way to discomfort when Ms. Gandhi brought up the unsavoury episode of him as Foreign Minister escorting terrorists.

George Fernandes had sullen contempt in his eyes, Murli Manohar Joshi had his usual supercilious expression; L.K. Advani, who took copious notes, wore a superior look; of all the Ministers, the Prime Minister was most respectful, only occasionally knotting his brows disapprovingly.

Her speech was well-crafted. Combative, punchy and satisfying her speech writers that their labours were not wasted. But she was out to prove that she was not a prisoner of her speech writers.

It was her willingness to improvise, to depart from the text, that gave her performance a new, unexpected and pleasing flavour.

That was not all. What the parliamentarians witnessed was a Sonia Gandhi willing to play the parliamentarians' game of give and take.

Nor was she ruffled by the heckling. At one point she told the NDA benches to "go on, go on".

She even pre-empted the Prime Minister's proclivity to get annoyed with her: "I will not enter into a quarrel with the Prime Minister's promise of one crore jobs a year; I know he gets very irritated." Mr. Vajpayee has been put on notice. He cannot play the "I-am-pained-how-dare-she-question- me" card. Her best line was "Mungeri Lal ke sunhere sapne" (reference to a popular Hindi television show) when she dismissed the Government's projection of an eight per cent growth rate.

So spontaneous and all-round was the laughter that T.R. Baalu had to ask his neighbour, Yashwant Sinha, to translate.

The speech was 15 minutes too long; she ran out of steam and punch towards the end. But she made it up.

The Congress benches and cheer-leaders watched with sheer delight as she got up thrice to interrupt Mr. Advani.

Her most personalised intervention came when she repeated that many who had gone to jail during the Emergency had written letters of apology to Indira Gandhi.

This prompted many, including Arun Jaitley and Ananth Kumar, to join the heckling. For once, she got their goat.

The BJP unleashed the most petty weapon in its armoury when its chief whip, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, got up to point out — totally irrelevantly — that Ms. Gandhi was not an Indian citizen between 1975-76.

The expected protest and brouhaha followed, leaving both Mr. Advani and Mr. Vajpayee to savour the moment.

Her most animated interruptions were personalised. All had to do with the legacy of her husband and mother-in-law. She was underlining her own leadership as part of a family legacy.

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