Apparently, Sonia's team of advisors have spotted the weak point in Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's recent statements, where he was cagey on the implications of the November 25 polls, and the Congress has now decided to turn the polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Mizoram into a mini general election.

With that in mind, Sonia's poll campaign will focus almost wholly on the negatives of the Vajpayee-led government with references to local issues wherever she speaks. However, the local plank will revolve around an overall attack on the Vajpayee government and project how the Congress is the party which can take care of people.

There are no guarantees on how much this approach will work but Sonia's three speechestoday in Mizoram, her first campaign tour to the state yesterday, provide interesting inputs. A total of 637 Assembly seats (320 in MP, 200 in Rajasthan, 70 in Delhi, 40 in Mizoram and seven by-polls in various states) plus a Lok Sabha by-poll in Gujarat are to go to elections on November 25 and the Congress sees this as a good indicator of what may follow in the nation's politics.

Consider what Sonia said in the Christian-dominated Mizoram where the poll scenario is interesting this year: ``In the past eight months, we have had the 18-party government in Delhi headed by the BJP and all of you know the results of these 18 different pulls on the government. In the last eight months, people of India have had to face unprecedented increases in prices of essential commodities, of food items, vegetables like onions, potatoes, cooking salt, oil and rice.

``While poor people all over India have had to struggle to survive in these difficult times, the BJP has been busy concentrating on the survival of its ownweak and opportunistic government, trying to keep its many allies happy. If this is what they have done to India, can you imagine the fate of Mizoram. Be careful of these forces. It is frightening enough that they can ignore the welfare of people and concentrate on their power play.

It is a strong critique of the Union Government which can only get more intense as the campaign gets along. The idea being to push Vajpayee on the back foot and convert the polls into a Sonia versus Vajpayee battle. Should this work, Sonia will have made the first impressive foray into the country's politics on her own. If it fails, it will be back to square one for the Congress.

However, Sonia is pushing along at the moment. Juxtaposed with the BJP's shortcomings are the Congress's plus points. ``Now is the time to safeguard your future,'' she told Mizoram's residents, ``Don't put your trust in the hands of forces that make cynical alliances in their search for power, that neglect the welfare of people for their own narrowaims, that will not respect your cultural integrity.