Commentary/T V R Shenoy

Kesri is just as vulnerable as Rao, and for precisely the same reason -- he can be tangled up in legal red-tape just as easily

There is a photograph of Aravinda De Silva at the crease on that historic day in Calcutta when his dogged defiance denied India a spot in the World Cup final. His eyesblaze off the printed page -- a graphic display of gritty determination to let nothing come between his goal and himself.

I notice a little of that same fire in some Congressmen's eyes today. They aren't prepared to tolerate anything that comes between them and control of the Central Secretariat. But what if the speed-breaker on the path to power is their own president?

There has been a reversal of roles in the last five months. In March, Sitaram Kesri was "an old man in a hurry." Well, age has caught up with him. He speaks now of permitting Inder Kumar Gujral to walk up the Red Fort on August 15, 1998!

But if Chacha Kesri is prepared to wait, his bhatijas (nephews) are not. Slow and steady may win the race, but that isn't a policy designed to appeal to hare-brained Congressmen. They want power as soon as possible -- preferably in the life of this Lok Sabha. But, and this is the important point, they aren't shying away at the very thought of a general election.

The root of that confidence is the United Front government's performance. (Or rather the lack of it!) Congressmen reckon they will win more than the 142 seats that they have today. Or, at worst, they won't lose too many.

From their perspective, the last months of the Rao regime were a dead loss. Narasimha Rao was more concerned with the cases against him than with the Congress. The result was that the "unconditional support" offered to the United Front seemed to be more like unconditional surrender!

"The Congress," Home Minister Indrajit Gupta declared pompously, "is giving us support because it doesn't have a choice!" Rao swallowed the insult even as his party writhed. There was a simple reason for this meekness -- Rao wanted 'protection' for himself in the various cases.

That situation was supposed to be rectified when Sitaram Kesri replaced Narasimha Rao. Unhappily for the ambitions of the Congress, I am afraid it was a case of replacing Mr Jaffer with Mir Qasim!

Kesri is just as vulnerable as Rao, and for precisely the same reason -- he can be tangled up in legal red-tape just as easily. There are four cases in the pipeline that could assume a more serious dimension. And if an unfriendly government wants, it can dig up more dirt.

The first case concerns Sitaram Kesri's allegedly disproportionate assets. The CBI told a disbelieving bench that the Congress president makes do on a monthly income of Rs 1,432. (They were told to go back and do their sums again!) But even the CBI were forced to concede that Kesri's son possessed wealth that simply couldn't be explained away.

Does that sound like an echo of Narasimha Rao's embarrassment at his son Prabhakar's activities? Here is another coincidence. It is said certain MLAs from Bihar deposited huge amounts in cash in their accounts just before Sitaram Kesri won a contest to the Rajya Sabha.

Shades of the JMM bribery case? Not necessarily, but Kesri's foes are already sniggering. And you can imagine their delight when a hawala case pops up to plague the former Congress treasurer...

This concerns 'donations' received by the Congress from tax-havens abroad. Moreover, the identities of the 'donors' have been carefully concealed. The whole murky episode has led to the taxmen scrutinising Congress accounts with greater care than ever before.

Finally, the fourth case addresses concerns suspicions about Sitaram Kesri's role in the murder of his physician, Dr Tanwar. Incidentally, the Deve Gowda government reopened the case after a Congressman -- Rajesh Pilot -- took it up.

Every action, Newtonian physics states, meets with an equal and opposite reaction. If Kesri beats too noisily on the doors of power, United Front hardliners will do some shouting of their own. The best way to whip the bhatijas into line is to control the Chacha!

Where does this leave frustrated Congress MPs? Looking to Sonia Gandhi perhaps? But then there will be amazing progress on the Bofors case!

Congressmen may well have imbibed some of Aravinda De Silva's defiant spirit after visiting Calcutta. But surely they haven't forgotten that even a De Silva performs best under the shrewd captaincy of an Arjuna Ranatunga. So who is going to be the Congress's captain?

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