Aware that Pawar will play a key role for the party in Maharashtra where he is on a good wicket, Sonia has made him the head of the party's strategy committee for elections. This is the first time that the honour has gone to him, usually reserved for Arjun Singh who's reportedly in the doghouse.

Pawar is also a member of the "war-council" which meets almost every night at 10 Janpath with Sonia Gandhi presiding. Arjun Singh is one of the eight members with adversaries like Ahmad Patel, Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy, Pranab Mukherjee and P A Sangma in it. Madhavrao Scindia and Manmohan Singh are the only two members who can be considered close to Arjun Singh.

Another committee, called the alliance committee, formed to work out tie-ups, was initially headed by Arjun Singh. Now no one person is in charge and Pawar has been asked to coordinate these efforts with Sangma,Mukherjee, Patel and Manmohan Singh.

Mukherjee has been made a convenor of the manifesto committee and Pawar is here too. The media committee is already out of bounds for Arjun and so is the strategy committee.

However, according to the sources at 10 Janpath, they feel that "nobody has been sidelined and nobody has been given extra mileage". The official line is that since this is election time, the Congress president is keen to involve everybody.

Parallel to this, party leaders claim Sonia is now more accessible to her MPs. The iron curtain has somewhat lifted with all calls seeking appointment being brought to her notice. And there is also talk of her first press conference.