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Sonia has cast a spell on Thackeray's magic: Pawar

Imagine Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray going around with a remote control. Imagine him clicking and clicking, furiously trying to get the Maharashtra electorate voting to his tune, but getting zilch response.

The logical step, then, is to get the remote checked. Which Thackeray does promptly. And what would he find wrong? Why, the batteries! They have been defused! By a certain Italian lady who answers to the name Sonia Gandhi.

The above, folks, was the picture which senior Congress leader Sharad Pawar strived to paint -- though not in so many words -- at an election meeting in Dadar, north-central Bombay. He was canvassing for Congress ally-in-the-state and Republican Party of India candidate Ramdas Athavale.

Madam Sonia, Pawar said confidently, with her campaign in Dadar on Sunday, has effectively defused the batteries of Thackeray's remote control. Before Sonia's entry the Bharatiya Janata Party had succeeded in creating the belief that they would form government at the Centre, he said.

"The BJP is an expert in spreading false propaganda. A couple of years ago, they had floated rumours that the idols of Lord Ganesh were drinking milk," he said.

Pawar claimed the Shiv Sena was "using abusive language" against Sonia, and the BJP kept harping on her Italian background. Didn't they know, the Congressman wondered, that according to Indian tradition the daughter-in-law assumes charge of the family when elders aren't around? Didn't they know that her husband's home is her own home?

The BJP leaders, apparently, didn't know the tradition. Or, maybe, they had chosen to forget it? In any case, Pawar wasn't going to let 'em get away with such things. So on he went attack-attack.

"Sonia," he announced, "is keeping the illustrious tradition of the sacrifices of the Gandhi family alive."

The reference, obviously, was to the Shivaji Park speech whence Sonia had rhetorised that she was prepared to lay down her life to keep the secular fabric of the country intact.

"Since the Centre is weak, terrorism has raised its ugly head once again in Punjab," Pawar spoke on, "while anti- national forces are active in Assam and recently in Coimbatore."

The Congress, and only the Congress, Pawar concluded, could give India a stable government and lead it into the 21st century. So...

UNI

Elections '98

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