Last week Congressmen emerged from a Desh Bachao rally in Delhi convinced that the end of their party's seven-year jinx was near. Many of them compared it to Jayaprakash Narayan's Purna Kranti rally of 1974. No, it was not the sight of party President Sonia Gandhi swinging and singing Hum honge kamyab. It was not even her 20-minute speech, a repetition of her inaugural address to the first-ever Congress block committee presidents' convention that preceded the rally. What convinced Congressmen was the sheer size of the rally. It is supposed to have worried even the BJP which had also organised an NDA function to felicitate Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee for completing five years in office-the first-ever non-Congress prime minister to do so.

GRASSROOTS LINK: Sonia greets a district-level worker at the rally

There was another reason. Party workers got to visit the capital and lobby for assembly tickets in some style. Those from the Congress-ruled states were particularly well looked after. Congress leaders also made good use of the event. With an AICC revamp on the cards, leaders waged their turf battle on the dais. If Ambika Soni made Mukul Wasnik emcee for the convention, the rival camp encouraged Karnataka MP Margaret Alva to address the meeting in Hindi as well as English. The mood may have been upbeat, but some things just never change.