Monday, March 27, 2006

sandhya jain on sonia gandhi, the runaway woman

mar 26th

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sandhya
Date: Mar 26, 2006 11:30 PM
Subject:

Organiser-Sonia-23March2006

Sonia: run away lady

 

Sandhya Jain 

 

            Contrary to the assertions of her spin doctors, this is actually the fourth time Ms. Sonia Gandhi has run away from an uncomfortable situation in her life in India. The first was in 1977 when her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi lost to the Janata conglomerate. Panicked at a possible post-Mussolini scenario in this land, Sonia Gandhi dragged her pilot husband and two children to the Italian Embassy for refuge; newspaper pictures of her sour countenance remain etched in my memory. Sonia returned home very reluctantly after the entire Gandhi family persuaded her to see reason. No doubt her countrymen (she was still an Italian national) also advised her that Indians were not vindictive and her personal safety was not in danger.

 

            The second time the lady fled a difficult situation was in 1999 when, after ruthlessly ousting the then Congress president Sitaram Kesri, she found Sharad Pawar and P.A. Sangma questioning her authority, particularly her desire to project herself as candidate for the Prime Minister's office. Rather than answer the questions raised, the lady quit in a sulk and her lieutenants then hustled up support for her, roughing up possible dissidents in the Working Committee, and organizing a bogus AICC meeting to endorse her coup.

 

            The third time - which her media bards seek to project as the first time - was in May 2004 when President APJ Abdul Kalam gently advised her not to press her claim to be sworn in, owing to certain ambiguities in the Citizenship Act. At that time, she had procured letters of support from slavish UPA allies and supporting parties, and announced to a televised press conference that normally the leader of the majority alliance was sworn-in as Prime Minister. But this land is Bharat Mata, and somewhere an ageless Vikramaditya decided whom it would just not tolerate to sit upon its throne. Doubtless to her own surprise, Sonia Gandhi had to make a virtue of necessity. A televised renunciation drama was enacted, and Dr. Manmohan Singh was soon in the saddle.

 

Now, for the fourth time, Sonia Gandhi has run away from a thorny situation of her own making. Even friendly media analysts find it difficult to support the surreptitious manner in which both Houses of Parliament were adjourned sine die on Wednesday, when an all-party meeting had decided on the recess and resumption of the budget session. This, combined with a news leak about a proposed ordinance to protect the UPA chairperson from certain disqualification from the Lok Sabha, had former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee rushing with a protest delegation to President Kalam.

 

            This put the spotlight uncomfortably upon Ms. Gandhi, because many of her actions as UPA and National Advisory Council chairperson are questionable. Ms. Gandhi has a propensity to settle scores with those who have incurred her personal wrath, even if they are not direct political foes, and this has landed her in her present predicament. The genesis of the present crisis lies in her soured relations with the family of megastar Amitabh Bachchan, which came into the open when the latters' wife, Jaya, made an oblique reference to the fact that no one defended her husband when incorrect insinuations were made about his involvement in the Bofors payoff scandal, the shadow of which falls squarely on Ms. Gandhi and her close friends.

 

Mrs. Jaya Bachchan later entered the Rajya Sabha as a member of the Samajwadi Party, with which Ms. Gandhi has a running dispute. Thereafter, a few things happened in quick succession. Mrs. Bachchan's membership of the Rajya Sabha was terminated on the ground that she held an "office of profit" as chairperson of the UP Film Development Council; a gleeful Congress said it would gun for SP ideological supremo, Dr. Amar Singh. Superstar Amitabh Bachchan, who was invited to inaugurate the international film festival in Congress-ruled Goa last year, was dis-invited from the function. He was also served a gigantic income tax notice while battling for his life in a Mumbai hospital.

 

But the humiliation of Mrs. Jaya Bachchan boomeranged when non-Congress parties decided to hit back. Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee became vulnerable as the Trinamool Congress complained about his chairmanship of the Sriniketan-Shantiniketan Development Corporation in West Bengal. Several MPs are equally vulnerable on this count, which jurists concede is a grey area of the constitution.

 

But Sonia Gandhi has wielded real power of patronage as chairperson of the National Advisory Council, with Cabinet rank, and owes the nation an explanation. Her hand was seen in the scandalous drama which saw the Italian Ottavio Quattrochi making off with the Bofors kickback payments. When the matter became public, she left it to the hapless Prime Minister and others to protect her from the flak.

 

Since the UPA came to power, Ms. Gandhi has announced Government largesse to victims of tragedies and natural disasters, such as the victims of a fire in a Tamil Nadu school and the Tsunami victims in Tamil Nadu and Port Blair. In fact, she has a penchant for upstaging the Prime Minister and other competent authorities by reaching tragedy spots first and announcing government relief. More recently, after the public outcry against verdict in the Jessica Lall case, she directed Home Minister Shivraj Patil to amend the Criminal Procedure Code suitably to protect witnesses in criminal cases.

 

Since the budget for her 'recommendatory' office of NAC chairperson comes out of Government funds, there is little doubt that Ms. Gandhi draws benefits from the public exchequer for all her activities, and thus holds an 'office of profit', that too, one which appears to have little constitutional justification. Thus, when the chips were down, she was actually the most vulnerable of those being targetted for disqualification by respective political rivals.

 

Her resignation should not prevent the Election Commission from deciding the issue of the legality of her presence in the Lok Sabha on merits, as in the case of Mrs. Jaya Bachchan. This means the EC must adjudicate if Ms. Gandhi's interventions in the House, like those of Mrs. Bachchan, must be expunged, and her salary and emoluments returned to Parliament. And before Ms. Gandhi returns to the NAC, presuming it is exempted from the definition of 'office of profit,' there must be a public debate on the relevance of that office, its powers and privileges, and budgetary support.  

 

END

10 comments:

iamfordemocracy said...

Where are the "newspaper pictures of her sour countenance" itched in Sandhya Jain's memory? Shouldn't a good columnist present at least one of them for the benefit of her readers?

EkSh00nyaSh00nya said...

>> The genesis of the present crisis lies in her soured relations with the family of megastar Amitabh Bachchan...

My thoughts exactly which I had posted earlier... good 2 c many people having the same viewpoint vis-a-vis this nautanki.

BTW, IMHO, nothing will come out of this criticism as the IB (Italian Barmaid) will soon, rather l8r, be back in saddle and also as the public has a very short memory, so things will soon be back 2 normal and all this hoopla would seem 2 b a thing of the past.. :-(

EkSh00nyaSh00nya said...

>>People have already forgotten Qutrochi, Bihar, Goa, Jarkhand, Volker and Navin Chawla....

U r right Ragz, we Indians have become 2 passive and as such know that nothing will change--even if somethings do they get back 2 where they were earlier, so its an exercise in futile... the same old story all-over again...
but as philospher George Santayana said (quoted earlier on this forum):

Those who forget history r condemned 2 reapeat it

so do we have 2 bear all this charade with a resigned attitude...no big deal--the typical Indian attitude--sab chalta hai--sustains it

Like what they say (in Hindi):

Mein hairaan , tum pareshaan...
Phir bhi Mera Bharat Mahaan
(something like...
Me amazed, u dazed, but India still remains a gr8 nation)

;-)

Hemish said...

Advani and Vajpayee fought for the chair of prime ministership and even now advani at the age of 80 has more past than future want to be pm. Atleast Sonia Gandhi does not show that she is desperate for pm. the office of profit is actually not defined properly as the law is archiac her post is not an office of profit everyone who has proper mental health will tell u that even BJP mps are holding on to it she resigned to save her party image who messed up badly dont tell me that she runs away on every issue infact now high court issued notice to vk malhotra on the office of profit and now bjp wants a bill now after creating a scene where in they acted as if sonia ghandhi was running away let them also face the same idiotic thing u r suggesting . everbody in politics are guilty of the same crime. And sonia gandhi is better than advani praisin jinnah who is the main cause of partition. BJP is a joke arun jaitley, sushmna swaraj, promod mahajan etc never won an election let them face the election before they talk

kautilya said...

hey himesh guy... scoot off .. and comeback when you get your facts right.. advani had resigned from his seat when he was framed by PVNR in hawala scam.. he fought elections only after he was acquitted by the courts..

your sonia mata was sleeping on her makhmali foam when her "friend" quotrochi's bank balance was being replenished by her slaves..

go home and fire an agarbatti in front of your goddess ..else she will get angry..

nizhal yoddha said...

100, a request: please drop the '2' and '4m' and the 'gr8' and all the other SMS abbreviations. it just makes it hard to read what you write. personally i find it so hard to read that i just dont read your stuff. it is possible others have this problem too. (even with SMS these days, using the T9 predictive dictionary, you can actually type in words correctly, of course).

nizhal yoddha said...

i love this hemish person. such a fine, upstanding example of the semi-literate being shepherded by the media!

Sailesh Ganesh said...

With a touch of irony, this reminds me of a christian saying (modified) "The media is our shepherd, and we are their sheep!"

Hemish said...

so sonia gandhi resigned as well and if advani resigned may be he too runs away from responsibilty and one thing more where do u people get ur information from media or from the devil. i think advani calls up and uprises u. Indian media is what saves this country and an important guardian of the democratic values. Half knowledge is dangerous like in your case. dont know the basics of demcracy. literacy is one thing but education is a different thing altogether.

kautilya said...

ROTFL :-)))))
hey hemish kid... have u even hit ur puberty...
go to bed... rahul uncle will get angry..:-)))))))))