Sonia Gandhi-- A Farce called sacrifice

Sonia Gandhi is reelected to the Lok Sabha. That she would be reelected was certain the day she filed her nomination papers. The curiosity was just about the margin. Now we know that she won a landslide with a record margin.

So, where is the sacrifice that the Congress harped so much about? Would it be fair to call 2 months absence from the LS a sacrifice? You resign in the budget session and be back for the winter session and call it a sacrifice? Maybe the Congress feels so. I would rather call it a holiday. As a refresher, let me remind you people that Sonia Gandhi resigned from her LS seat over the office of profit controversy. She was the chair person of the national advisory commitee then. This post was viewed as an office of profit (I am tempted to use the short form OOP, though many of my readers are technical people and will instantly conclude it as Object Oriented Programming :D).

Back then Sonia had become a symbol of sacrifice one more time. The Congress media managers hyped up the issue to take political mileage. They are all well aware of one thing. Public memory is pretty short. It didnt matter that Sonia was filing the nominations barely a month after she resigned. She had successfully proved that she is not a person who runs behind power.

However, there are people like me who are not particularly impressed. Firstly, there is no sacrifice. After all, she stayed away for just 2 months. That too when the parliament was not in session. If she had regretted for holding an OOP, she must have stayed away for the entire term. Just resigning from both posts and immidiately getting one of them back cant be termed as a sacrifice, how much ever you project it to be one. It is nothing but a farce. The ultimate loser here is the state which had to bear the reelection expenses.

How much ever I may dislike Sonia and her politics, I must admit that I am a big votary of her PR skills. The way she ends up projecting herself as the wronged one everytime, is just awesome. One incident fresh in everyone's mind is of course her dramatic refusal of the PM's post. After the BJP lost badly in the 2004 elections, they had nothing to fight about except the issue of Sonia's foreign origin. They kept on harping. Sonia refused the post promptly, leaving the BJP gasping for breath. Had they anticipated this move, they could have countered it effectively. Sonia Gandhi scored a double there. She won over millions of hearts and at the same time made sure that major policy decisions of the government were taken at 10, Janpath, her residence.

This time too, she has managed to pull off a spectacular win. The BJP is again caught on the wrong foot. Along with her own win, the party's success in Assam and TN have confirmed that Sonia reigns supreme in Indian politics, at least for the time being.

Well, as an after thought, I feel like adding one more thing. The person who had the required capability to counter Sonia is sadly no more. Mr Pramod Mahajan will be badly missed by the BJP.