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CONGRESS: ALLIES Steady Old Hand The focus will be as much on the intelligence failure in Kargil as the party's modernist vision.
It is battle time. And India's grand old party is on the warpath. Pegged back by the flare-up in Kargil, the Congress is all set to embark on an aggressive campaign to wrest back the initiative. The party has carefully fashioned a two-pronged strategy. Its immediate objective is to puncture the ruling coalition's halo of the Kargil war and expose misadventures like the Lahore bus ride and the nuclear tests. The long-term goal is to project itself as the only party capable of providing a stable government. The Congress plans to checkmate the BJP's attempt to appropriate the nationalistic high ground by differentiating between the army's achievements and the government's failure. Congress President Sonia Gandhi has begun to hammer home the point that the intrusions were inflicted on the nation because the government lowered its guard. "If the government had reacted in time, our brave jawans would not have had to lay down their lives," she said at a public meeting in Madhya Pradesh. The party has also been stressing the fact that it was the armed forces who ultimately saved the day. "The crown of glory belongs to the forces and not Vajpayee," says the party's spin doctor Kapil Sibal. The special Kargil cell of the Congress -- headed by CWC member Pranab Mukherjee and comprising K. Natwar Singh, Sibal and Mani Shankar Aiyar -- has been meeting daily, sometimes even twice a day, to calibrate the party's response. "We have accepted the BJP's challenge and will take the issue from village to village," says CWC member Rajesh Pilot. Though the Congress campaign will be led by its star campaigner Sonia, a galaxy of leaders from Pilot to Digvijay Singh to Ashok Gehlot will also be pressed into service. Lawyer-MP Sibal will take care of the TV sound bites. The party's strategists, aware that the BJP is trying to convert the elections into a Vajpayee versus Sonia contest, are working hard to shift the focus away from individuals and convert it into a choice between parties with different visions. "This election is not about personalities but choices that this country must make at the threshold of a new millennium," says a senior Congress leader. Adds Mukherjee: "We are the only party with experience, expertise and the vision to provide a stable government." His inference is clear: single party governments provided by the Congress have lasted their term while coalition regimes are inherently unstable. The Congress says it is the only party that will contest over 400 Lok Sabha seats and could thus be the only party capable of forming a single-party government. It dismisses the NDA as a fractious conglomeration of 22 parties. "It's not a coalition with a difference but a coalition full of differences. A vote for them will mean yet another election," says economic affairs department Secretary Jairam Ramesh. Also, the stress is on projecting the Congress as the only party with a pan-Indian appeal: Saare Bharat se nata hai, sarkar chalana aata hai (Relates to the entire country, knows how to govern). The Manifesto Committee headed by Shivraj Patil is projecting the party as modern and looking to the new millennium. For the moment though guns are trained on the Vajpayee regime's handling of Kargil. The party plans to capitalise on the government's reluctance to divulge the exact date on which it received information about the intruders. "We will expose the hollowness of their claims," thunders Pilot. The war over the Kargil war has already begun. FINANCE "We are fighting on a lean and
low budget." ADVERTISING "We'll remove all doubts about
a Congress win." MANIFESTO "It commits us to a responsible
and responsive regime." |
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