Inside Track

But last week at I.K. Gujral’s Iftaar party, and President K.R. Narayanan’s At Home on Republic Day, Sonia displayed a new-found confidence. She smiled frequently and seemed far more relaxed than earlier as she moved around exchanging pleasantries rather than sitting stiffly in one corner. At Rashtrapati Bhawan, Sonia was sandwiched between V.P. Singh and Chandra Shekhar while waiting in thereception line. And though Sonia reportedly believes that both the former prime ministers did not take adequate steps to protect her late husband, she exchanged pleasantries with considerable warmth. In fact, both politicians have suddenly changed their stance on Bofors and the Gandhis; apart from being bowled over by Sonia’s charm, they have also realised that she is the only one who can effectively combat the BJP.

Sonia, however, still makes little attempt to conceal her dislike for Congress President Sitaram Kesri. For the joint rally at Rohtak, Kesri timidly made inquiries from 10, Janpath whether he could fly with Sonia in the same helicopter. The response was so cool that Kesri hired a separate helicopter at considerable expense for the party, using the lame excuse that he had to take his doctor and his domestic, Nanku, with him and there was not enough place in Sonia’s aircraft.

Incidentally, some astrologer predicted that Kesri’s domestic Nanku will become an MP. The result is that theonce-obliging young attendant who used to offer guests tea and refreshments has become indifferent to his duties since he sees himself as going places in politics!

At 10 Janpath, B.V. Wanchoo is once again in charge of Sonia’s SPG bodyguard. Wanchoo, who was transferred out in November, was called back at Sonia’s request once elections were announced.

Double Talk

There is more to Lakshmi Parvati scaling down her demand for 22 seats in an electoral pact with the BJP in Andhra Pradesh to just four, than just shrewd bargaining. Some in the party were anxious to sabotage the Parvati-BJP tie-up. They reckoned that the BJP would not win many seats, only improve its share of the vote in Andhra and the real beneficiary would be the Congress. The BJP would prefer Chandrababu Naidu to win in Andhra since there is a possibility of his support to it after the election. Even when Lakshmi Parvati wanted only 10 seats the BJP’s negotiating team said nothing doing. The saboteurs were taken aback when NTR"swidow meekly settled for only four seats!

BJP’s OBC clout

The upper caste BJP party leadership was adamant about denying Gangacharan Rajput, a Lodh OBC, the party renomination from the Hamirpur constituency in Bundelkhand. At the BJP’s parliamentary board meeting Pramod Mahajan and Sushma Swaraj made the removal of Rajput a prestige issue since he was the MP who had organised the inter-party OBC parliamentary forum which helped scuttle the the Women’s Reservation Bill.

Party president L.K. Advani asked the UP state unit to propose an alternative name from Hamirpur, but it declined. Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, also an OBC, insisted that dumping a Rajput would have a negative impact on not just Hamirupur but the adjoining constituencies which are also dominated by Lodhs. Singh threatened that he would not campaign for the party in the parliamentary election if a Rajput was denied a ticket. Rajput’s name did not figure in the first two lists of the party’s UP candidates. But the leadership finallycaved in to the OBC threat and cleared his name grudgingly in the final list of 17 candidates from the state.

Political future

Rather than Sonia, it was Priyanka who was very interested in standing from Amethi on a Congress ticket. What reportedly seems to have stopped her eventually is that she is in the family way. Though Priyanka is notcontesting the election this time, her in-laws, the Vadras, have accepted the fact that their bahu will eventually go into politics. Husband Robert Vadra has recently stopped his earlier practice of applying for bank loans for his business ventures under the joint name of his wife and himself, so that if anything goes wrong nobody could later point a finger at Priyanka.

Vegetarian ways

The BJP party office has turned strictly vegetarian, perhaps because of the large number of protest letters that greeted an interview that A B Vajpayee gave in which he confessed that fish was one of his favourite foods. The upshot was that those who came to theBJP’s Iftaar party in Delhi, where traditionally various meat dishes are served to break the day’s fast, got only pakoras, dates and sweets. Urdu journalists were also taken aback when, at in a special tea for them hosted by Vajpayee, the menu was strictly vegetarian.