950827

Rao reasserts authority

after Sonia's attack

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao reasserted his authority over the ruling Congress Party this weekend after a broadside from former leader Rajiv Gandhi's widow, telling workers to go and prepare the country for general elections..

Rao told a meeting of Congress members of parliament on Saturday, the last day of the session, that they should "go to the people and educate them on what the Congress government has done during the past four years," a party statement said..

Rao told the meeting he expected the investigation into the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi by a Tamil suicide bomber in May, 1991, to be completed by December.

Gandhi's widow, Sonia, in a speech in his old constituency of Amethi on Thursday, criticised the slow pace of the probe. In a thinly veiled attack on Rao, she said the party should follow the principles set out by her husband.

The speech set off another round of soul searching by members of Congress, which is at a low ebb following a series of state election reverses and a bitter internal struggle that led to a faction breaking away in June..

With general elections now only months away - the government has said it will call them by April -- and Congress facing the prospect of a severe drubbing at the polls, many party members are casting around for a new impetus.

There had been wide speculation that Sonia Gandhi would use the Amethi speech to declare her entry, or that of her son Rahul, into the political arena. .

But the tentative nature of her approach appears to have backfired, allowing Rao to take back the initiative and begin to fire his party into preparing for the election.

"It was not a political statement, merely emotional blackmail," The Statesman newspaper commented on Gandhi's speech.

"She must be told plainly that to be constantly reminded that her husband and his mother died for the country is getting tiresome," it said.

A group of middle-ranking Congress legislators who had been reported to be planning to visit Sonia Gandhi to pledge their support after the Amethi speech apparently abandoned the idea, fearing the gesture would be wrongly interpreted..

Rao told the meeting of Congress members of parliament "the party would prepare for the elections, including selection of the candidates, sufficiently in advance", deftly reminding them that their futures were in his hands.

The prime minister told the parliamentary party meeting that members should highlight the pro-poor emphasis of his administration, a theme that is becoming one of his major campaign planks..

The issue also gave him a chance to rebut Sonia Gandhi's speech..

"He stressed that the government had not deviated from the policy of the party, laid down by Nehru and pursued by Indiraji and Rajiv Gandhi, namely upliftment of the poorer sections," the party statement said.-Reuter